


Torchwood: The Call

by DontOffendTheBees



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016), Torchwood
Genre: (seriously my Mike is practically an OC there's lots to get into), Alcohol, Aliens, Anxiety, Big Bang Challenge, Canon Queer Characters, Conspiracy Theories, Crossover, Don’t copy to another site, Everyone Is Alive, Everyone Is Gay, Fleshed-Out Minor Character, Flirting, Gen, Guns, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Homophobia (past), Introspection, Mike POV, Mike is a lil cutie and the space boys know it, Military Backstory, Nightmares, Non-Graphic Violence, Past Child Abuse, Past Violence, Post-Project Blackwing (Dirk Gently), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Road Trips, Self Confidence Issues, Sexual Harassment, Tourist Spots, Various implied crushes/relationships/potential relationships (Torchwood style), nerdy michael, past death of an OC, sooooo much flirting, y'know that thing that john and jack call flirting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-04-17 19:21:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21747466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DontOffendTheBees/pseuds/DontOffendTheBees
Summary: There wereloadsof reasons to book a flight to Wales.Goodreasons. He was possibly on a top secret government watchlist- that was a good reason to get out of the country! Plus he’d reached the end of his South West UFO tour, and it was either go round again for the cryptid spots or start over somewhere else. Might as well start somewheretotallyelse, and this Torchwood stuff was the most promising and least tourist-trappy lead he’d found so far. He had the money, he had the means, he had…Geez, okay. He hadliterallynothing better to do.In which Michael Assistent goes soul-searching, and finds something out of this world.Written for the DGHDA Brave New Year Reverse Bang, art by marizetta.
Relationships: Flirting/Teased Relationships Only
Comments: 24
Kudos: 22
Collections: DGHDA Brave New Year Reverse Bang 2019





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAPPY NEW YEAR, FRIENDOS!!
> 
> So, 2019. That happened, huh?
> 
> Honestly, shitty world things aside, it was a good year for some stuff- I'm still incredibly proud of myself for getting my 118k Big Bang fic done! Apparently that streak was not to last, because I've hit some roadblocks this month- Christmas happened, other stuff happened, hand pain happened. Plus I got a little ambitious, probably wrote a longer fic plan that I ought to and, well, didn't get through it all. 
> 
> So yes, for now, this story is incomplete. What I've posted below is sort of the intro- which, fortunately, is at least over the minimum word count- and set-up to Mike because let's face it, his character was so small in the show that any story about him is practically about an OC. I promise, hand on heart, to post the rest- which incorporates more of our Torchwood babes- by the end of January! It really isn't gonna be *that* longer, and I probably could have rushed it out in the last couple of days if I really pushed, but I also want it to be *good* so I'd rather give myself a little bit of time to edit!
> 
> This story might also, possibly, be the start of a series, because I've been thinking about a Torchwood crossover for a while now- and thanks to marizetta's gorgeous art, I had an excuse to finally write and post one of the many little stories one could find in that universe! Future instalments could include comedy, angst, action, smut (the horniness of Torchwood + the agency can *not* be overstated), honestly with these two freaking bonkers shows combined anything's possible! There will also be several pairings along the way from fuckbuddy to romantic to one-sided crush, possibly including but not limited to: Mike/Jack/Ianto, Jack/Dirk, Owen/Todd, Tosh/Amanda, and who knows how many others! You throw all these horny bisexuals into one universe, weird shit is gonna happen! So if you're interested in that series and/or enjoy this fic in itself, please come talk to me about it in the comments or on tumblr/discord, I need more people to chat with!
> 
> Please note the tags on this fic: this fic and/or series will contain content similar to that of Torchwood the show, so there will be violence, gore, alcohol/drugs, weapons, sex, swearing, harassment, death (not of main characters probably!! Had enough of that!!!!), all that jazz. This fic will probably be the least graphic and intense of the lot but it still references a lot of stuff, so heed the warnings and be safe!
> 
> Huge, HUGE thanks and love to marizetta, for drawing [this beauitful art](https://marizetta.tumblr.com/post/190001278175) and finally giving me a reason to dabble in actually posting some crossover fic for these fandoms (and no, the scene she drew is not in this fic so far, it's in part two I promise!!). It was so cool to finally work with you dear, your art is wonderful and you are wonderful <333
> 
> Also s/o to kieren-fucking-walker, for being the only other person in the universe who ships Todd/Owen and is happy to scream about those stupid angry angsty bisexual disasters with me. 
> 
> Torchwood logo from TinSvagelj on deviantart (and coloured by me), Torchwood font from fontmeme.com.
> 
> Enjoy! <333

It was just a leave of absence. At least, that’s how it started. He had a load of vacation days saved up, and after all the crazy stuff with the breakout and Icarus- _Dirk, _that was his real name, right?- and the freaking _fantasy fairytale scissor knights, _he figured he may as well use them.

But it wasn’t until he was showered, dressed and staring down the barrel of his first day back to Blackwing in three weeks with shaky hands and his brain pretty much stuck on a huge, unclosable error pop-up that he realised a vacation was never gonna cut it.

About three hours had gone by when he finally emerged from his panic room (that was the good thing about working a dangerous, secretive but _insanely _overpaid job, plenty of cash for home panic rooms. Of course the downside was you had a lot more reasons to think you might _need_ one). It took another four hours to draft and re-draft his resignation email a thousand times, being _super _careful with his grammar and twice as paranoid about his tone. There were probably a couple more hours in there between the final draft and actually hitting send, but it _was _pretty much the scariest click of his life. He was back in the panic room like a shot, curled up in the corner with his ears straining for the sound of an armed super-secret SWAT team busting down the apartment door.

The result was a lot less dramatic- if he wasn’t so freaked out, he might have said underwhelming. An email on his phone, a polite acknowledgement of his request, and details of a meeting at the end of the week to sign about a billion NDAs and turn in his badge and weapon. Not even any insistence about sticking to the contracted notice period of two months. Easy.

_Too _easy.

He slept in the panic room that night. And _slept _might have been a stretch.

The week passed in a haze of coffee, paranoia, and frantic googling. Just a few searches here and there, about the legal consequences of incorrectly terminated government contracts and clauses and loopholes in the event of mental health impediments and the men in black and sniper rifles and how effective panic room doors are against sniper rifles, y’know. Just stuff it’d be kinda useful to study up on that was absolutely not making him _more_ freaked out than he was when he started.

Friday rolled around, and after waking up with his nerves all shot to hell he tripled his morning run to burn them out. He spent way longer showering, too, rationalising that it was probably necessary after working up a sweat like that- and nothing to do with just really wanting to stay in the warm safe space and never leave.

Then he remembered the scene from that old movie _Psycho, _and scrambled for a towel so fast he nearly went over on his ass in the slippery tub.

With slasher music and a near-death experience in his head, the nerves were back; and when he tentatively walked across the Blackwing compound a couple hours later he was strung so tight he swore he could hear the discs grinding in his spine.

Stepping into the elevator- and feeling kinda like a rat scurrying right into the trap- Michael Marvin Carlos Assistent gulped hoarsely, and quietly hoped that he hadn’t spelled any of his names wrong on his life insurance, pre-drafted farewell tumblr posts, or will.

Some returned belongings, about a trillion signatures and a long, penetrating stare from the new supervisor that actually made him _miss _the blank, bewildered eyes of the worse-than-incompetent Mr. Friedkin later, it was all over. Mr. Adams nodded, his new bored-looking assistant pocketed Mike’s ID badge, and just like that he was sent on his way, this time escorted by a couple buff guys in black with subtle but impossible to ignore guns strapped to their hips. New hires, probably; these definitely weren’t the same guys Mike used to gossip with about superpowers and stupid bosses in the break room. These guys were straight-up Men in Black, and Mike found himself obsessively checking on them out the corner of his eye the entire elevator ride, fully expecting one of them to whip out a neuralizer and scrub Mike’s mind clean for safety.

But they made it to the surface, the guys walked him as far as the doors, and then they melted into the shadows behind the tinted glass as Mike stepped out into sunlight he half expected to never see again.

Blinking in the glare, Mike drifted zombie-like towards the outer gates that would take him past Stan the door man and out of the compound for the last time. All for the price of a couple hours and some signature hand cramp. He was free. He was _safe._

For now.

The panic room became his bedroom again that night, and a few more after. But he didn’t have a job to go to or roommates to judge him so why the heck not. Six inches of reinforced steel sure helped him feel a little safer from the prospect of blindfolds and chloroform and a new home on the wrong side of the test chamber glass.

Didn’t do shit against the nightmares, though. Nightmares that took him right back to the place he just escaped, to terrified people trapped like lab rats while he was too damn scared to do anything about it. Nightmares that took him back further; to bloody dirt and screams, ringing in his skull that wouldn’t go away. And further, too far, to a cold, quiet, immaculate house. A soulless home, allegedly a _family _home, a dark, empty living room and the single flickering point of light; candles on the mantelpiece, a photograph with a smile that makes his heart hurt. And behind him always, burning on his neck, the bitter, brokenhearted stares that pierce him with their unspoken words: _it should have been you._

He gave up on sleep for a few nights. He didn’t miss it.

It took at least a week for things to settle. When he was down from a hundred percent chance of traumatic nightmares to a more regular sixtyish, he finally started ducking out of the panic room for more than just heating up Pot Noodles. At some point he even _shaved _again; not that anyone would think the pathetic baby peach fuzz on his chin represented two weeks’ growth, but it still felt good to wash it away down the drain. He balked at the shower when that stupid horror music played in his head again, but figured he could compromise with a bath. He even went outside first, when he got a sudden random urge to pick up something scented and bubbly to put into the water. When he made it to the store without a panic attack, he made it worthwhile by picking up a bottle of soft body butter and a bath bomb. Why not.

Sinking into lemon-scented, reassuringly scalding water and feeling his tension start to bleed away into it, it felt like as safe and comforting a place as any to close his eyes and let his frantic spirals unfurl into something a little more ponderous. Just kinda let the thoughts roll out and pretend he wasn’t judging himself nine ways to Sunday for most of them.

He missed it. He figured he ought to at least admit that to himself. He missed his job- not the place, or even the people. Just the sense of _purpose. _Having something to wake up for that got him out of the house and kept his mind busy, stopped it whizzing round in circles and tearing itself to shreds. Not that he actually _liked _what he did there. Which was kinda sad, really. He didn’t feel _bad _about not liking it or anything; he wouldn’t wanna be the kind of person who enjoys working in a glorified torture chamber. It just seemed sorta pathetic to miss putting his time and attention into a job he hated. Jeez, what a waste. If he was gonna give up his time and his freedom and his _life, _it should be for something he cared about, right?

...Well, shit. It seemed pretty obvious when you put it like that.

Okay, yeah, maybe it _was _obvious, but… well, how was _he _supposed to know a job didn’t have to be soul-destroying? It’s not like anyone ever _told _him that! His parents sure didn’t- they always cared more about his brother, anyway, and what did he do? Got a job and let it kill him. Literally. He was barely twenty when he died.

They all mourned him, obviously- that was the first of many times that Mike had locked himself in his room and hoped he’d never come out. But even though his mom cried and his dad replaced the candles round the photo like without fail, they never seemed to regret a thing. They never said that they pushed too hard, or that they wished Johnny had never left. Not even _close, _they were _proud. _Proud as peacocks of their son the war hero. They never stopped talking about him; how brave he was, how selfless and dedicated. A model soldier, a model son. _Way _better than the weird scrawny one who kept re-reading the same Ray Bradbury books over and over, who was weak and timid and clearly gayer than Liberace.

Well, they never actually _said _that last part, but they were sure thinking it. Not even a tiny gay nerd with his head in the clouds was naive enough to miss it.

It had to be the biggest regret of his life, following in Johnny’s footsteps. Or, uh, at least _one _of the biggest- there were kind of a lot to choose from. But with his parent’s resentment bleeding into every nook and cranny of the house ‘til the second he enlisted, it had sure felt like the most unavoidable.

The whole thing hadn’t been a _total _bust. His time in the military gave him some stuff he’d never had before- discipline, a work ethic, good habits. Heck, it even gave his useless little noodle arms a little more structural integrity. But that wasn’t all it gave him. It also took the quiet, simmering shame and confusion he’d felt all his life- ever since he tried to hold Jason Benowitz’s hand in third grade and got chased home after school- and turned it into abject terror, until he was just a shaky gay sheep praying not to get torn apart by the wolves. Ironically, it also gave him sexual experience- but the ‘two (allegedly) straight dudes just making do’ kind, the kind where he learned how to get off quick in cramped quarters and give blowjobs that were effective without being intimate. No first kisses, not even a hand to hold; that was never the point. It gave him exhaustion and pain, a lifetime of bad dreams, shrapnel and six months hospitalised to patch his body and mind back together. He never did shake the scars; his shoulder looks like no-man’s land and PTSD’s a bitch.

And then, fresh off the back of all that shit, when he was barely out of the hospital doors it gave him something else; a new job. One they said would be quieter, less violent, well paid, stable. Better for his state of mind.

Maybe the majority of the US military really didn’t know what Blackwing was all about. Maybe they just didn’t care. He doubted he’d have been put anywhere near it if they did.

Mike sank deeper into the sweet-smelling water, ‘til just the top of his head and face poked out. Eyes, nose, just like a pale, anxious alligator. Man, alligators had a pretty sweet deal, just chilling in sun-warmed shallows all day. Until some hunter came along, tried turning them into boots. Did people still do that? Was the attitude to gator skin more of a fur or leather deal? He’d read somewhere that fur was crueller than leather ‘cause a lot of it was skinned alive- did you have to skin gators alive? What kinda badass-asshole combo did you have to be to get a job skinning live alligators?! Shit, did anyone even _want _gator skin or was it only crocodiles? _Why _only crocodiles?!

He didn’t even realise he’d picked up his phone from where it was chilling on the floor playing Owl City on shuffle- but the next thing he knew it was in his hands, probably dangerously close to the bathwater, and his fingers were frantically tapping to ask google the very important question ‘what’s so special about crocodile skin’.

His thumb must have slipped and hit autocomplete or something because his search didn’t take him to a page of results to sift through. Instead it dropped him into one of his million bookmarks and he got freaking jumpscared by the AvP wiki page for the crocodile alien. _“Jeez-! _Okay, fuck." Just barely keeping his phone above water, he grumbled and glared at the picture of the comic page, cursing the creature’s bulbous head and slavering mouth. It wasn’t even that scary- especially when you remember it got slam-dunked into a volcano by Batman- but it caught him off guard. Honestly, if a friggin’ xenomorph ruined baths for him like Hitchcock ruined showers he was gonna be _pissed. _He clicked away from the page quickly, tapping the nearest out- which turned out to be some banner ad at the top of the screen. He didn’t plan on staying on it for long.

When he realised it had spat him out on a page called _Essential Stops On Your UFO Road Trip, _though, he figured he could stick around a while.

Obviously he’d heard of all the places; heck, he had a couple of folders of research on them, somewhere. He must not have looked at them in years, though, because he was getting a little buzz of excitement down his spine at each spot listed. God, he really oughta dig those folders out, sometime.

Or maybe… maybe he could do just a little _better _than a folder of ancient print-outs and scribbled theories on ripped out highschool notebook pages.

Maybe he'd just stumbled across a new, better reason to get out of bed in the morning.

It was pretty much the only thing that made sense, when you thought about it. He was unemployed, at a loose end, going kinda insane from too much inactivity and too little fresh air and human contact. Throw in six years’ savings from an overpaid job and, well, the answer seemed pretty obvious, right?

Two days after his bathtub epiphany he was out. Out of the panic room, out of his apartment and poking gingerly at the edge of his comfort zone. Rover refuelled, trunk loaded, binoculars round his neck and telescope across the back seat. It had been kind of a long time since he drove further than half an hour for work, but with the early May sunlight on his face and his old mixtapes crackling from the stereo it felt a heck of a lot shorter than his old commute. Minutes, hours, eventually even days days blurred into a sundrenched haze as he re-learned his way round the dashboard, hands molding to the familiar wheel like old friends.

There was something kinda crazy about it, getting to check out all those places he'd read about years ago like items on a to-do list. Being able to say, at last, that he'd been there, done that and got the t-shirt. Literally- he could pretty much replace his wardrobe with the tees and sweatshirts and souvenir baseball caps he was collecting at every kitschy gift shop he stopped by. Plus keychains, magnets, plushies, postcards, everything he could get his hands on; the tackier the better. Not just because he wanted them- which he _did, _almost desperately. But they came with a pretty sweet perk on the side. Call him paranoid, but he couldn't shake the feeling that he escaped Blackwing _way _too easily. He figured, on the off-chance that he was still being tailed or checked up on, that it'd be in his best interests to look like a gullible enthusiastic tourist, and _not_ a crazy conspiracy theorist with a trunk full of investigative gear.

Joke's on them- he was _both _those things!

...Okay, yeah, he was terrified. He was pretty sure the US government wouldn't see the funny side if they decided to bring him in. It was a freaky situation, but… also kinda sick. What? It was hard not to feel a _little _like 007 when every cheesy Instagram gift shop haul pic was a calculated counter surveillance manoeuvre.

Of course, it felt a lot _less _cool when he remembered he had no one to send his five hundred postcards to. Mom and Dad, maybe. If he was a better son. Or, y’know. If they were better parents.

Days passed, selfies were taken, plushie aliens lined up one by one on his dashboard like a colourful little platoon. He slept, somehow. Better than he had in _years; _there was something about the transience of it all, sleeping the night in a motel bed he knew he'd never sleep in again- maybe that old panic room had done more harm than good, in the end. By night he slipped under crisp new sheets in his soft PJs and dreamed, only occasionally waking in a cold sweat. By day he walked, shopped, and drove and drove and _drove, _every mile taking him further from the cells and the machines, all the Priests and Friedkins and Adamses left far behind in the rear view mirror. It felt like freedom; like he was putting physical and metaphorical distance between himself and the past, finally making inroads into his future.

Whatever the _fuck _that was.

Surprising no one, he thought about aliens _a lot_ on those drives. Hard not to with a tiny squadron of them keeping him company from his dash. And it didn't let up between each leg of the journey either; he was stopping in a very specific set of places, after all. They were on his mind from the UFO reporting and research centres of Myrtle Beach and Roswell, under the otherworldly lights above the Chinati Mountains, all the way to sound baths and convention panels at Joshua Tree and on the tip of his tongue every time he pretended not to know the tour guides’ ‘top tips’ for discerning genuine UFOs from man made objects (come on- what was he, freaking _twelve?_). Extraterrestrials- and not just the cute emoji ones plastered all over his Insta story- were all he could think about. He hadn't been this fixated since he was a teenager, when his dad rolled his eyes and told him he'd grow out of it. Just like he'd grow out of watching Star Trek, or being queer, or eating Lucky Charms with chopsticks when he was bored

Yeah. Turned out his dad was a pretty shitty psychic.

He'd done some serious investigating, too. Between all the cheesy tourist stuff. He'd made notes in all the research centres, talked to locals, even drove the Rover out into the desert with GPS on his phone and a metal detector in hand. So far, nothing solid, but it didn't discourage him much. He was more certain than he'd ever been.

Aliens _were_ real. He knew it.

Obviously he hadn't actually _seen _one yet, not with his own two eyes, but they had to be. What kind of _universe _would they live in if people with superpowers and magic dogs and freaking fantasy land scissor knights existed, but there wasn't a speck of life outside of this little blue rock? That would be _insane! _If this world was all there is…

No. It wasn't. There was more out there- and he was gonna find it.

He'd never felt more sure of anything, camped out on Giant Rock, watching the stars hide their secrets from the world and the onlooking tourists all around him. This was what he needed to do. What he _wanted _to do; he'd only needed a little time and space to see that. Maybe, _at last, _he was on the right track.

Now, with an entire world- and possibly some pocket dimensions on the side- to choose from, there was only one more question:

Where in the_ heck_ did he even _start?_

“All alone, gorgeous?”

Mike startled, and looked up to the voice like a deer in the headlights. “Um-”

“Soon fix that,” said the man without missing a beat, low British accent wrapping round Mike like velvet as he colonised a spot next to him on his gift shop picnic mat. Mike’s eyes wandered to his weird clothes- grubby but fancy, and weirdly anachronistic- and his slicked hair, but came to rest on his eyes. Blue-black, not big but somehow deep and dangerous like the bottom of the ocean; or a vast, starless night sky. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

Alarm bells were ringing, caution tugging on his sleeve, but his lips were already tripping over the answer. “It’s, uh- it’s Mike.”

“Hmm- short for Michael? Mikael?” A teasing smirk, a twinkle in his eye. _“Michaelangelo?”_

“Th-the first one.”

_“Michael,” _the stranger crooned, and that smirk spread out into a wolfish grin as he held out his hand. “John Hart, although,” he winked, so smooth and natural it was like his face was tailored to it. “With eyes like that, beautiful, you can call me whatever you like.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part two *will* be here this January! In the meantime, if you enjoyed this set up and getting into little Mikey's head, I would *love* to hear your thoughts- comments are my fuel!
> 
> I probably won't be writing in many Bang challenges this year- I really need to give my hands a rest- but I'll still be running them, so if you want to make some DGHDA fandom content and meet some new people get involved at dghdabigbang.tumblr.com!
> 
> Thanks for reading lovelies <333


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, friends!!
> 
> Well, I *half* kept my promise- I've posted more of this fic before January's over! Unfortunately, it's not the *rest* of the fic. Yeah, due to a combination of factors- me being sick and miserable with a cold, me being unable to stop myself making this fic way longer than it needs to be, y'know just me stuff- this fic is still not finished, but after about 6k words I figured I may as well post another chapter. So, this will now be a three chapter story, third chapter hopefully to be posted in February- I'm working on it I promise!- and while we *still* haven't got to the scene illustrated by the lovely marizetta, I can at least happily say that Mike's not all on his lonesome anymore, at least not for the entire chapter- whole gang's here, binch!
> 
> So yeah, read, enjoy hopefully, and we'll get this little adventure wrapped up soon! Once again heed the tags/warnings- poor Mike is being sexually harassed left, right and centre in this fic, but in fairness he's enjoying a lot of it and I can guarantee you he is *perfectly* safe, just very flustered. He's not used to this many pretty charming people wanting to get jiggy with him, it's a very confusing situation, bless him.
> 
> Enjoy!

“So,” said John Hart with a swig of his eye-wateringly strong quadruple whiskey. “What’s a nice boy like you doing sitting on rocks all on your lonesome?”

“Uh- what everyone else is, I guess,” Mike replied, eyeing his own Pepsi warily. He’d been super _extra _careful to watch the bartender pour it and not let it out of his sight, but just the proximity of John and his concentrated hangover in a glass was making him anxious. There were probably safety measures Mike should have taken before allowing a strange man to coax him from his busy stargazing spot and into a bar, but he was trying not to think about that too hard right now- it was already too late to do anything about it.

“Oh, yeah- all those wide little eyes on the sky. See anything good?”

Mike shrugged. “Honestly? Mostly helicopters.”

“Not surprising.” John’s laughter lines crinkled as his winning smile reemerged. “All the stars are in your eyes, tonight.”

It was a cheesy as hell pickup line. Logically, he knew that. But, well, he didn’t _get _cheesy pickup lines a lot- let alone from hot English guys while he was on vacation. Feeling his cheeks going hot and pink, he made a strangled sound and swigged his soda desperately; which only got John grinning wider.

“Well, aren’t you adorable,” he said, leaning towards Mike over the bar, hand wandering underneath it. “I could just put you in my pocket.”

Mike didn’t know if he was imagining the little static jolt he felt as John’s fingers brushed his knee, but he wouldn’t be surprised if the guy had actually shocked him somehow; there was something kinda _crackly _about him, about the air surrounding him. Mike startled a little but didn’t move his leg, which John apparently took as permission to rest his entire hand there and trace his thumb in little circles which- which was _fine. _This was totally cool. Maybe a little _too _cool.

Clearing his throat, Mike put the goosebumps on his arms down to that same weird electric charge. “I, uh- w-what were _you _doing there? On the rock, I mean?”

“Waiting for a lift,” he said, shrugging. “It was a long shot. Still, found something better- sure you don’t want something a little stronger, love?”

“Uh,” Mike laughed breathily, shaking his head. “No, no. _Definitely _not.”

“Sober?”

“Sorta.”

“Me too,” said John with a wink and another pointed sip. “‘Cept on the weekends. Been a lot of the not-sober times, then, have there?” He literally had his tongue in his cheek. “Too much fun?”

“Uh, no, not really, I just…” Mike shrugged, nursing his soda between two hands. “Just… kinda figured once I started it might be hard to stop.”

“Fair enough.”

“And, uh. And you…?”

“Oh, _lots. _Been to just about every kind of rehab you could imagine. Drink, drugs.” He shot Mike a wink. “Sex. And…”

Mike, even though he was hardcore blushing after that last part, still caught the hesitation. “And…?”

“Ah. It’s nothing. All in the past, one day at a time, all that bollocks.”

“Well, uh. Congrats.”

“Congrats on never starting,” he countered, lightly clinking his glass against Mike’s.

“Thanks?”

“You never get curious?”

“I mean… I. I guess. I’m kinda more curious about…”

“About?”

Mike blushed, ducking his head. “I, uh. It’s not really super my thing. The drinking, the, uh, y’know.”

“The sex?”

“What? No! I mean, yeah, I- I, uh. I don’t hate that part.” He didn’t _get _any of it, but he sure didn’t hate it.

John smiled lazily, eyes twinkling. “Best news I’ve heard all day.”

Mike did not have the first freaking idea how to respond to that, so he made another awkward noise in his throat and scrambled right ahead. “I, uh. And yeah, not so much the drugs- I mean, I’ve done uh, some- y’know, nothing heavy. And a bit of… it, it helps my anxiety, sometimes. But I’m not like, _into _it, it’s just… there’s other stuff to be curious about, y’know?”

“Such as?”

“I…” Man, this would be so much easier if he could make up his mind whether he was into this guy or not. What he wanted to say now was the kinda thing he usually had to keep on the DL if he wanted a shot at getting lucky. And considering how long it’d been since he’d _done _anything and how hot this guy was, maybe he did want that shot.

Ugh, what the heck; John found him in Joshua Tree’s biggest alien watching spot, he knew what he was signing up for. “I’m- I’m kinda more curious about aliens, honestly.”

Arching his brows, John spared a glance for the telescope propped up against Mike’s barstool. “You don’t say.”

“I know, I know,” Mike snorted, pulling his pint glass closer to his chest. “But I’m _serious.”_

“They’re overrated.”

Mike blinked. “Uh… what?”

“The aliens. Space.” He shrugged, downing the rest of his drink and wordlessly ordering another. “The view’s always prettier from the other end of the telescope.”

“How do you…”

“I’ve been around the block a few times. Seen some things that’d make your pretty little head spin.”

It was probably a joke. It _must _have been- there was no way Mike got _that _lucky, attracting the attention of the one guy on the rock with some legit experience. It had to be a wind up, or maybe just a play to get into his pants. He shouldn’t rise to it. He should get up and leave.

He leaned in, glancing from side to side and lowering his voice. “Like what?” he whispered.

John turned his full attention to him, and flashed his canines in a wolfish smirk. “Things you wouldn’t believe,” he murmured, leaning in closer, his hand trailing from Mike’s knee up his thigh. “Waterfalls made of diamonds. Cities made of star scrap. Cliffs as old as time itself and languages even older; beginning of the universe, more or less.” His hand alighted on Mike’s cheek, tingling hot and heavy. “And the end.”

Mike gulped. “The… the end?”

“Just a glimpse. It was more than enough.”

Mike hesitated a little longer than he should have before shaking his head. “No. No, um, heh, there’s no _way _you could-”

“I’ve got my ways.”

It was crazy. Space and dimensional travel, that was one thing but… but _time? _There was no way. Mike frowned and pulled back, hastily putting a bit of distance between himself and John Hart’s hot, heavy gaze. “You’re screwing with me.”

“Not just yet- although if you want to get out of here…?”

Mike laughed bitterly, slumping back and twitchily tucking his hair behind his ear. He hadn’t trimmed it in a few weeks and he could feel a nervous tick developing. “Geez, I’m such an idiot.”

John shrugged, lifting his fresh drink up to his lips thoughtfully. “Nah. Just a tad optimistic.”

“You must do that a lot,” Mike muttered, leg jittering. Which was when he realised John’s hand was still on it. “Lie to guys in bars.”

“Guys, girls, bars, saunas- practice makes perfect. Although I wasn’t actually lying this time.”

“Shut up.”

“I wasn’t! Believe me, I’m as shocked as you are. _Honesty,” _he spat out the word like it left a bad taste in his mouth. “Urgh. What good did that ever do anyone? I’d much rather tell you whatever pre-made pretty words that get us out of this bar and somewhere a little more horizontal. Although I suppose vertical’s a possibility, too, long as it’s solid.”

Was it bad that Mike still thought he was hot? Yes? Yeah. Definitely. “Jerk,” he muttered pathetically, cheeks burning.

“If I was operating at my best, you wouldn’t be saying that until much, _much _later.”

Scowling- not very well, he didn’t really know _how _to scowl and he probably just looked like a kicked puppy-, Mike scooped up his backpack and stood up from the bar, shedding the hand from his thigh in the process. “I’ve gotta go.”

“Let me guess; early morning? Long drive? Time of the month?”

“No, I just- don’t wanna be here.”

John pouted, dark eyes widening in some kinda mock remorse. “Aww, I’m sorry baby; I won’t do it again!”

“Later,” said Mike. _Jerkoff, _he added in his head.

“How about a kiss for the road?”

He didn’t answer. He also very carefully didn’t get within arm’s length of him.

Sighing, John turned his attention back to his drink. “God, it’s like bloody Cardiff all over again. Twenty-first century; frigid as anything.”

Mike blushed furiously, shoving his arms in his jacket sleeves more forcefully than necessary and gritting out a ‘thanks for the soda’ between his teeth because he was raised right. He left the bar with his cheeks burning, his telescope case clutched at his side like a baseball bat, and the sound of John Hart’s discontented muttering following him out into the street.

“Even that Torchwood lot; take them out of their incestuous little fuck-bubble and suddenly they’re Victorian maidens. Hope you find them; you’ll fit _right _in.”

It was only a twenty minute walk between the bar he’d been dragged to and the hotel he’d booked for the night. He actually felt pretty safe, all told- the streets were well-lit and there were still plenty of people around spilling in and out of nightclubs- but he kept his guard up anyway. It probably wasn’t safe to get too comfy after ditching some random bar dude, not when said dude had some pretty clear intentions. Flirty guys in unfamiliar bars who could barely take a hint were bad news, especially when they were determined to cop a feel every ten seconds. Or at least they were usually; maybe Mike was just dumb or out of practice, but he didn’t feel especially unsafe in _that _way around John. Sure, he kind of had an edge of menace, and Mike was just _maybe _a little worried that he’d happily stab someone, but somehow he doubted he’d take more than a kiss in the process without, uh, _enthusiastic _consent. Which Mike had been on the verge of giving, anyway. Several times.

Okay, yeah. He was _definitely _dumb and out of practice.

It didn’t matter anyway, not now. Thankfully, when the guy turned all cold at the end there it was more than enough to snap Mike out of whatever weird sex magic he’d been lowkey succumbing to, and the brisk night air was clearing the rest of the clouds away. It wasn’t cold exactly, but a little fresh for May, just enough to make him wish he’d stopped to slip on his sweatshirt as well as his jacket. He gathered the sloppily folded garment to his chest with a small shiver, and frowned when something crinkled in the pocket. It turned out to be a receipt- the bar receipt. John’s name was scrawled across the back, along with a phone number; it had just a few too many digits. And some dots. Maybe he’d been more hammered than he let on, he _was _drinking some pretty strong stuff. Mike rolled his eyes and balled up the paper roughly.

For some reason, he didn’t throw it in the next trashcan he passed.

Glancing back a couple of times as he went, checking that he wasn’t being followed- and honestly, still not a hundred percent sure he didn’t kind of _wanna _be- Mike made it to the hotel, the elevator, and finally his room unaccosted. He closed the door behind him with a mixture of unease, relief and disappointment, the old but well-maintained metal latch clicking into place with a comforting sense of finality. He waited a few more seconds, didn’t hear any other footsteps, and finally lurched over to the bed with a sigh as he dumped his backpack on top of the sheets, tossing the balled-up receipt down next to it.

A couple of his postcards jerked free from the outer pocket on impact, fanning across the drab beige coverlet. One from the Roswell UFO Museum came corner-to-corner with the receipt; the squat, blocky grey alien stared at him with its red eyes, its fingers reaching out as if to touch the stray spidery curls of a ‘J’ and a ‘3’ poking out from the crumpled mass of delicate paper.

Geez. How was one flirty encounter in the bar the _weirdest _thing about this entire trip so far?

Biting his lip, Mike picked up the postcard and went for the pen in his pocket- which he actually found behind his ear and on the verge of going overboard, but it made it back to the hotel without getting lost in the street so he got lucky this time. Turning the card over, he thought back to John, all the weird things he was saying- the _weird _weird ones, not just the sexual weird ones- and tried to carefully print the most specific ones from memory.

_TORCH WOOD_

Sure, maybe a lot of it was stupid B.S. he’d made up to hit on gullible guys like him, but… there was something about it. Some feeling that Mike couldn’t shake. Clicking the pen thoughtfully, he squinted at the words. Added ‘CARDIFF’ underneath. They didn’t seem familiar, at least not in context. He’d never stumbled across any combination of them in his research, or the Blackwing files. It didn’t jog his memory of anything helpful, but it wasn’t nothing. It was _something. _Three entire words of something.

AKA two entire words _more _than he needed to get started.

A good research deep-dive always took a while to set up properly; if you were gonna dig into stuff that could get you a black bag over your head, you couldn’t afford to skimp on the encryption.

But if there was ever a time and a place to go down that rabbit hole, it was alone in a hotel room with no TV, no more stops on your alien tour, and no job to go back to. Theoretically, he had all the time in the world.

Secure search established, he started with the basics: checking that he knew what Cardiff was. He guessed correctly that it was a city, but felt pretty awkward about mistakenly placing it in Scotland instead of Wales. Geography was always kind of his worst subject. There were probably other Cardiffs around- different towns, maybe in different countries, maybe some people or corporations- but Cardiff, Wales was easily the biggest result, and it seemed like a good place to start. Maybe John was from around there, originally, or moved near there- he was pretty sure English and Welsh accents were different but they started close enough together. If this was the right Cardiff, it narrowed his search down to about fifty five square miles (give or take urban districts).

Starting point narrowed down and proxies reconfigured to give him a more localised search to the area, he started in with his other clues. If ‘torch wood’ didn’t turn anything up, he’d just have to cast his net out a little further. Good thing he’d picked up some instant coffee earlier- it was gonna be a _long _night.

At least that’s what he thought; until a Reddit thread labelled ‘torchwood squashed my bloody begonias’ popped up halfway down the first page of results.

Mike squinted at it, examining the details. It was new, barely an hour old if he had his PST/GMT timezones right. Maybe the title was a typo, or some kinda local slang- heck, maybe John Hart was sending him on a wild goose chase.

But he clicked into it, anyway. Why not, right?

The thread opened with a grainy photograph of some pretty pink flowers squashed in the unmistakable pattern of a tyre.

_ffermwr34372_

  * I can’t be the only one this has happened to. They came haring round the corner in that bloody great SUV and trampled half my garden under the tyres. Didn’t even apologise- when I had a go at the bloke behind the wheel he just sneered at me and said he didn’t like flowers. Little tosser. Must’ve been in his twenties, nasty look on his face. Even his bloody clothes- popped collar, one of those wanker necklaces. Absolute disgrace. Is that place doing bloody work experience these days?

_bloggyogwr_

  * i’ve seen that one! right twat, pushed past me in the queue with his mates and tried to chat me up on the way. pig.

_penguinnythsss_

  * Not as bad as that boss mind- the american one.

_Maeve.G.Jones_

  * Oh, but he seems a lovely man… So charming...

_mickidiot_

  * *cheesy* more like

_OrenDonna_

  * he’s right fit tho all of em are tbh even the tool

_rrrolkien_tolkien_

  * Not got a good manner between them, though.

_penguinnythsss_

  * or a braincell

_NotASkiffleBand_

  * Himbos AllianceTM

_oggyoggyoggy0i0i0i_

  * idk the chinese girl seems p smart

_Benjam1ne_

  * wow racist

_oggyoggyoggy0i0i0i_

  * im not being racist s2g i saw her in the back of teh car tapping away on a load of screens it lookd well complicated

_SplottSwot_

  * I saw her following some bloke down the street once- and guess who turns up on the 10o’clock that night after trying to off his wife and kids.

_penguinnythsss_

  * w o w wtf

_OrenDonna_

  * that’s proper creepy

_neverfeartheLishere_

  * so? she was probs tryna stop him smh

_a-s-h-y-69_

  * m8 u gotta stop basing ur moral judgements on who u wanna fuck

_neverfeartheLishere_

  * i don’t!!!!11

_a-s-h-y-69_

  * oh so u don’t wanna shag her

_neverfeartheLishere_

  * that wasn’t the question

_rrrolkien_tolkien_

  * I don’t mind her, or that other lass- they’re the only ones who’ll give you so much as a please and thank you before ruining your day.

_thesheenbean_

  * my nan says they drove past her and asked for directions once

_NotASkiffleBand_

  * What- all that fancy tech and no satnav??

_thesheenbean_

  * they were after a person i think- nan said they were chasing a blowfish

_neverfeartheLishere_

  * ...wat.

_thesheenbean_

  * what she says!!

_neverfeartheLishere_

  * did it flop down the street or just sorta roll

The thread was taking some left turns that even Mike had trouble following- especially when he had to throw about half the posts into a translator because they were in a language he could only assume was Welsh. Either that or British text slang was _really _out there. He couldn’t for the life of him figure out what the heck _blowfish _meant, though- was it a mistranslation? A joke? Maybe John Hart was on his phone in that bar, switching between burner accounts to keep this weird-ass ‘conversation’ going for a wind up. It didn’t seem like his style, but then, what did Mike know?

He changed tabs for a moment, repeating the search to look for anything a little more promising and a little _less _confusing, but with no luck after half an hour he figured he should give the thread another shot. He clicked back into it warily, trying to keep his mind open and his expectations low.

_NotASkiffleBand_

  * Surprised they haven’t taken this thread down, yet.

_bloggyogwr_

  * you wonder why they bother- whole bloody city knows about em seems like

_rrrolkien_tolkien_

  * Well if it makes them happy to run around playing silly buggers pretending to be Men in Black.

Mike froze, everything except his finger which continued to scroll and scroll even as the blood rushed from his face. He had enough Men in Black to worry about on his _own _continent, the idea of finding more overseas sucked pretty bad. But a lead was a lead. Besides, it might not even be real- it probably _wasn’t _real. It was probably slang, or a joke, or conspiracy theorist bait meant to make guys like him waste his time, and they wouldn’t reel him in _that _easy!

_a-s-h-y-69_

  * not swarve enough r they

_bloggyogwr_

  * Yeah less mib more red dwarf

_oggyoggyoggy0i0i0i_

  * yeh they seem p shit- their secrecy algoritmh thing must be too if this threads still up

_NotASkiffleBand_

  * Maybe they have some poor sod checking it by hand- humans gotta sleep.

_neverfeartheLishere_

  * lmao mods are asleep post alien pics

He kind of expected that last one to be followed by dumb memes, some X-Files reaction gifs or something. And there were those, plenty of them.

But tucked in amongst them, somewhere in the middle of a reply thread, was what looked like a vertical pic from someone’s phone. It was a little out of focus, and at first glance just looked sorta like a bald guy in a boiler suit. A black boiler suit, or maybe dark blue, but otherwise not that different from what they used to put the subjects in at Blackwing. Mike shuddered and zoomed in, but the quality was too crappy for it to make any difference to what he saw. It was just a photo of some guy, some guy with no hair and… and a really, _really _ugly face. Like, he felt mean for thinking it but that face, what he could see of it through the blur, was _all _wrinkles; deep, canyon-like fleshy folds and stretched, gurning lips and- _were those fangs?!_

Fingers stumbling in his hurry, he downloaded the image and scoured the metadata, searching for anything that indicated edits or tampers. It was hard to tell, it had clearly been passed between devices, but on first look? It was just a photo. Just a standard, unedited photo of a pale, bald man. With an animalistic face. And teeth that could gut a rhino.

...Okay. He’d bite.

There were _loads _of reasons to book a flight to Wales. _Good _reasons. He was possibly on a top secret government watchlist- that was a good reason to get out of the country! Plus he’d reached the end of his south west UFO tour, and it was either go round again for the cryptid spots or start over somewhere else. Might as well start somewhere _totally _else, and this Torchwood stuff was the most promising and least tourist-trappy lead he’d found so far- and the fact that he woke up and checked the web to find the Reddit thread totally scrubbed just cemented it. He had the money, he had the means, he had…

Geez, okay. He had _literally _nothing better to do.

Mike had never lived in a city before, let alone a British one- _let alone _a British one where most of the population would happily kill him if he messed up and called it English. It was a culture shock in the most literal sense, and he’d be lying if he said he didn’t spend the first couple days hiding in a hotel room, memorising the locations of every hospital, pharmacy and police station in a ten mile radius. Just in case.

It wasn’t until he’d spent a couple days holed up with that research that he decided to venture outside. Not to investigate potential alien spots or anything- he hadn’t found many of those, anyway, whoever got rid of the online thread really wasn’t letting anything else slip through the cracks. Instead he just went out with a mission to pick up some food, and when he managed that without getting lost or punched or mauled he started to feel a little more confident. Less like he’d made the biggest, most impulsive mistake of his life. He started getting lunch out in cafés and parks, or eating his grilled cheese (which they called a _toastie _here and he kinda loved that) while walking aimlessly around the city. It wasn’t exactly a tactical way of investigating but it helped him feel like he was getting his bearings. Made the city feel a little less like a huge and hostile beast waiting to devour him. He started to understand it. Anticipate it.

Incredibly, he even started to _like _it.

“Oh, aye. _Someone’s _in a good mood.”

Blushing, Mike cleared his throat and stuffed the last teriyaki Pot Noodle in his tote bag. “Y-yeah. Guess I am.”

“Hot date, is it?” teased Gethin; Tesco clerk and quite probably Mike’s defacto best friend in the city. He was remarkably non-judgmental about the fact that Mike only ever bought microwave meals and ‘crisps’- _not _chips, chips here were the huge greasy fries that came wrapped in paper and polystyrene in portions bigger than Mike’s head. He was kinda enjoying learning all the little language differences.

“Wha- oh, _no, _no,” Mike chuckled awkwardly, fumbling a pack of Wotsits (that he mainly bought for the name, and because they looked kinda like Cheetos) on its way into the bag. “No way. I’m just…” he shrugged, shaking out the crumpled bag straps and slinging it over his shoulder while he pulled out his wallet. “Figuring things out, I guess.”

“Good lad,” said Gethin with a sage nod as he happily changed Mike’s crisp twenty pound note. “Had me worried there for a mo’- wandering round like a little lost lamb, all nervous.” He passed Mike his coins and receipt with a friendly wink. “Not so bad when you get used to us, eh?”

Mike smiled and dropped the change in the charity box shaped like a yellow bear by the cash register. “Yeah. Not bad at all. Thanks, Geth.”

“Ta, mate,” Gethin smiled, nonchalantly returning to his football magazine. “Mind how you go.”

Standard goodbyes all done, Mike pocketed his wallet and stepped out into the night, shivering a little at the gust of air through the automatic door. It wasn’t _cold, _they were well into June, but compared to his west coast tour the nights in Wales were pretty bracing. Man, living in America so long sure had made him soft. He tugged his knit scarf up around his chin against the wind chill and ducked round the corner.

Mike liked seeing the city like this, even when he was too cold and hungry to hang around and really take it in. He bolted past his favourite pizza joint (so far), taking a deep breath of the smell of hand-rolled dough before the wind whipped it away. He almost regretted loading up on a dozen ready meals to get through with that smell tempting him, but he guessed there’d be other nights for pizza; that restaurant wasn’t going anywhere. Although _he _might be. Would be. _Should _be. He was in a hotel room in a foreign country, living day to day on savings and Pot Noodles, it wasn’t exactly a permanent set-up. If his lead turned into a dead end, he’d be on the next plane back.

Unless he just… wasn’t.

It was a crazy idea. A Dumb, reckless idea, but he kinda couln’t help wondering what would happen if he just, like, let this be his new thing. If he looked for a place- an apartment, a loft, whatever- to lease and get all his stuff sent to. If he found one he liked and just _went _for it, signed his name and paid the deposit with what he would’ve spent on his return flight. What if he put an entire _ocean _between himself and Blackwing and… everything _else, _for good? Man, what an idea.

“Too soon, dude,” he muttered, tugging his scarf tighter round his neck. “You don’t have to set up shop in the first place you find!” Realising he was talking to himself in public, he bit his tongue and finished the thought in his head. _Besides, you haven’t even found what you came here for._

Ugh. Sucked when he was right. So far _Torchwood _hadn’t led him to much. But he’d only mentioned it to one or two actual real people so far; unless those Reddit guys were seriously exaggerating, he was bound to stumble across _someone _who knew them eventually. Might even see them for himself. Heck, if he moved here it might be _his _flowers getting crushed under their top-secret SUV.

_Torchwood first, _then _big life changes._

Sighing, he hiked the bag a little higher on his shoulder and turned down the alley that would spit him out right by his hotel. It was a good shortcut, if a little creepy- probably his least favourite, to be honest, but his mind was starting to race and he needed to get back and distract himself with some dumb shit on YouTube, _stat. _Two minutes in creepy darkness for ten minutes shaved off the total walk seemed like a good compromise; couldn’t plan any drastic and life-changing events in two minutes!

Turned out two minutes was more than long enough for a drastic, life-changing event to find _him._

He heard the footsteps just in time- heavy, loping, and coming right his way with no sign of slowing. He whipped towards the sound, and God or Buffy or _someone _must have been smiling on him because just a glimpse of a crazed, contorted face hurtling towards him was enough to make his basic training kick in.

Lurching sideways, Mike dodged the first charge and grabbed his attacker’s shoulder, kicking their knees out and knocking them to the ground. He had to toss aside his grocery bag before he could pin them down, and that gave them enough time to wriggle onto their back and face him, hissing and spitting like a cat, like a… a hairless, shrivelled, _terrifying _cat.

Mike gawked at them a little too long.

They- he- shit, fuck, _it, _it was on him like a shot, throwing its entire weight onto him and snapping like a fighting pitbull. Hands that felt human clamped his shoulders but nothing, _nothing _else about this _thing _was human.

Staring up at the feeble play of distant streetlight on the lumps and whorls on its face and the fleshy stretch of its distended jaw, glinting on sunken eyes and filthy, deadly tusks, Mike couldn’t even remember how to scream. All he knew was the frantic pounding of his blood in his ears, and the inhuman roar of the creature as it opened its slavering jaws for the kill.

Well. That, and the tiny, unhelpful little voice in the back of his head yelling _knew it! I _freaking _knew it!_

The creature- the _alien- _keened, an awful sound that scythed right through Mike’s soul. Probably its victory cry, or a sound of hunger or its _hey guys look I found some lonely idiot, come chow down _pack call, and not even Mike- paralysed as he was by mind-numbing terror- could avoid flinching and screwing his eyes shut with a shudder of revulsion. But hey, maybe if he couldn’t see those teeth lunging for his jugular this would all be over quicker.

When it sagged on top of him, though, he had to wonder if it was more into crushing its prey into an easy-to-slurp paste on the pavement. Not what the flesh-ripping fangs would suggest but hey, tell that to the boa constrictor.

_“Ngh,” _he grunted, wriggling under the heavy mass of unmoving alien on his chest. Where were the teeth? He could feel that mouth breathing hotly against his throat, why hadn’t it bitten down? Was it screwing with him? _Savouring _him?

“Nice_ shot!”_

Mike jumped- or he would have, if he wasn’t stuck fast. The voice was coming from beyond his feet, towards the end of the alley he’d not reached in time. And unlike most voices he’d been hearing lately, it was unmistakeably American.

“Well, didn’t look like there’d be time for another go,” said another voice, this one Welsh and a little softer than her guy friend. “Owen, is he…?”

“I’m getting there,” came a more English voice- but maybe that was just the sarcasm. “Can’t see a pissing thing. Tosh? Do us a favour.”

Suddenly there was light, LED white and scorching even through Mike’s eyelids.

“Cheers. Right, let’s have a look…”

It was even brighter when a thumb prised Mike’s left eye open to shine a penlight directly onto his retina. Mike jolted, jostling the weight on his chest.

“Well, he’s conscious. Help us get this bugger off ‘im, yeah?”

“Didn’t black out- impressive,” said the American. Footsteps, at least two sets of them advanced, and Mike took an enormous gasp of air as the creature’s dead weight was dragged off of his chest.

“Right, mate,” said English guy, patting Mike’s shoulders. “Open those eyes for me.”

That was kinda the _last _thing Mike wanted to do. For some reason it felt like as long as he didn’t look, whatever was going on wasn’t real and he didn’t have to deal with it.

“Oh, for- I haven’t got all night, sweetheart. C’mon, open up.”

He did, almost out of habit- disobeying direct orders kinda gave him belly rumbles.

Bright light greeted him, but not as blinding with the pen light gone. In the wide beam of the LED coming from… somewhere, a guy watched Mike with concentration somehow both intense and detached. A pale guy, with short, dark hair, squinty eyes, and lips that looked like they were made for sneering.

“Good boy,” he said, lowly. Definitely English, but not Dirk Gently English. Nothing so crisp and clean as that. “Tosh.”

The light came closer, casting a brighter glow on Mike- as well as the person carrying it. A woman, seemed like; pretty, straight hair, maybe Japanese, looking at Mike with eyes that were big and concerned and about three times more comforting than her buddy’s.

“Looks like someone had a lucky escape,” she said softly. Also English, but a little more familiar. “Are you…?”

“He’s fine,” the guy answered for him, turning Mike’s chin from side to side to inspect his neck. “Barely a scratch on ‘im.”

“Some good news, at last,” said the American from somewhere over to the left. Mike turned his head so fast he made the medic guy curse under his breath. Cast in the ghostly glow of Tosh’s flashlight, the American- a tall, striking figure in a near floor-sweeping coat- gave Mike the most charming smile he’d ever found himself on the receiving end of.

“Always a shame when the cute ones get mauled.”

Blinking, Mike glanced back at the other two. Neither of them seemed interested in the fact that their, uh, colleague? Boss, whatever, was apparently flirting with the victim. Neither did the other woman- dark haired, presumably the Welsh speaker- at the American’s feet, crouched over the creature’s body and wrangling its arms into chunky cuffs. The play of Tosh’s torchlight on its body glimmered on the dart jutting out of its neck.

It also gave Mike his first, totally unshadowed look at its face.

“Oh my go- it actually-” he laughed, a little (a lot) manic, and scrambled to his feet, totally ignoring English dude’s grumbling. “It actually looks like- I though maybe I was, like, imagining things or, or going _crazy, _but it actually-!”

“Hey, easy,” said American dude, reaching out to catch Mike by the arms. He probably wasn’t expecting resistance; if he was, Mike would have found it _way _harder to shrug him off and keep walking ‘til he could fall to his knees next to the creature that nearly killed him.

“No _way,” _he breathed, hand hovering by its face. “It- this is-”

“None of your concern,” his new friend Captain America said flatly, accompanied by a firm hand on Mike’s shoulder. “We’ll take this from here.”

“It- but it’s…”

“He’s in shock,” said moody English guy.

“Well, he’s _had _a shock,” said the Welsh lady, securing the cuffs on the creature before gently catching Mike’s hand in both of hers. “I know it’s all a bit nightmarish, sweetheart, but it’s alright now; you’ll be just-”

“I’m not in _shock, _I’m-” he laughed again, holding on tight to her. “I’m fricken’ _jazzed, _man! Oh, my go- it’s a freaking _alien!”_

“Terrific,” said English, dry as a bone. “He’s one of _those _ones.”

_“Owen,” _Tosh hissed.

“This is- this is _amazing,” _Mike babbled, ignoring them both. “I mean- what kind of crazy coincidence is _this? _I mean, I sure _hoped _I’d find _something _here but I’ve been in town, like, two weeks? I thought I’d have to search for _months, _years but- but it’s _here! _And _you’re _here, you-” he snapped his fingers. If he was a little less giddy and adrenaline-fuelled, he’d probably have realised he should stop running his mouth. _“Torchwood, _right?”

“Christ, keep it down, mate,” Owen snapped.

Captain America snorted. “‘Kay, _you _can be judgy when you stop using that name to order take out.”

“...Alright, fair cop.”

“How do you know us?” asked the Welsh lady, sounding a whole lot more wary now.

“W-well some British guy in a bar said your name, and I did some-”

“Can you be a little more specific?” asked Captain America, withering.

“Uh- _English _British, brown hair.” Mike wasn’t sure if he should say John’s name; no way of knowing the kind of consequences that could lead to, for either of them. “Liked whiskey and vintage threads.”

The hand on Mike’s shoulder tightened, and it finally started to sink in to his amped-up idiot brain that he should have played his cards closer to his chest. “Uh… friend of yours?” he said with a nervous chuckle.

“That sounds like…” Tosh mused quietly.

“Could be hundreds of blokes fitting that description,” said Owen. He didn’t sound like he was convincing himself much, and he definitely wasn’t convincing anyone else.

“Owen, car- you’re taking over. Tosh, help Gwen. All of you, get our toothy friend back to base,” said Captain America sternly, lifting Mike to his feet with both hands on his arms. “Me and…?” He tapped Mike’s shoulder meaningfully.

“Uh- M-Mike,” Mike stammered.

“Me and _Mike _need to have a little chat.” There was a smile in his voice, which was almost enough to mask the steel underlaying it. Almost.

The Welsh lady- Gwen, presumably- raised both eyebrows as she hooked her hands under the alien’s left shoulder. _“Just _a chat, is it, Jack?”

“Just a chat. I’m on duty.”

“Never stopped you before,” muttered Owen, tossing some keys from hand to hand as Tosh went to help Gwen. “Don’t let ‘im get cold; and keep an eye on his pupils.”

“Aw, Owen. Anyone would think you cared.”

“Hippocratic oath, mate.” He scowled, snatching the keys out of the air one last time and giving Mike a once-over before turning his back. “‘Sides, I don’t like to see the fit ones wasted any more than you do.”

“Uh,” Mike fumbled, blinking at his retreating back. “Thanks?”

“Ignore him,” Gwen grunted as she and Tosh hauled the limp alien upright between them. She nodded towards Captain America- towards _Jack_. “And watch out for him, too. Reckon you’re just his type.”

Mike thought he heard Tosh mutter _‘who isn’t?’ _under her breath, but they were already on their way with the alien hanging between them like a drunk friend, so who knows?

“Alone, at last.”

Jack’s voice sent a shiver down Mike’s spine- and not just because he could feel it on the back of his neck. He thought about running when he felt Jack’s hand fall from his shoulders, but figured he wouldn’t get far. And honestly… he kinda wanted to see what happened next.

What? He didn’t come all this way _not _to find what he was looking for!

Taking a deep, steadying breath, he turned round- and came face to _stupidly _attractive face with the guy who was possibly about to kidnap, mind wipe or murder him.

Jack grinned, blue eyes twinkling in the retreating torchlight, and held out his hand. “Captain Jack Harkness,” he said, taking Mike’s hand against his broad, warm palm and seemingly forgetting to even shake it.

_...What a way to go._

“Uh- h-hi.”

“Drink?”

Probably a bad idea. Mike had _definitely _hit his quota on being lured to bars by hot, sorta dangerous randos this month.

Then again, something told him he didn’t actually have a _choice _in the matter. And after everything he’d seen tonight… He was close. This could be _it; _what he’d been looking for all these weeks, all his _life. _This tall, intimidating, unfairly hot guy could be the last piece of the puzzle.

So there. A totally valid, totally logical, totally _not _selfish or horny or idiotic reason to follow this guy to a secondary location and drink alcohol with him.

“..._One _drink.” He narrowed his eyes. “And- and if I’m not back at my hotel by nine, my girlfr-”

Jack arched his eyebrow.

“..._Boyfriend _is gonna call the cops.”

“Don’t worry- I’ll have you in bed by curfew.” He winked, and Mike felt blood rush to his cheeks. “And that’s a promise.”

“...Is it… Is it rude to say I immediately regret this decision?”

“Save the regret for the morning after, handsome.”

Mike sighed, and let Jack tow him away. Why the heck not.

Decisions, decisions, all of them dumb.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Right, that's it, all the pieces in place! One more chapter is on its way to wrap up this little story- which, hopefully, will be an intro to a bigger (if sporadically updated) series that gets more of our fave characters and some weird and wonderful ships involved!
> 
> If you read and enjoyed this chapter, *please* do leave us a lil comment, it really helps me and will defo keep me going on the final chapter! And if you just wanna chat about this AU or torchwood/DGHDA in general, hmu here or on tumblr (dont-offend-the-bees), I need people to holler with!
> 
> Thanks, lovelies- until next time! <3


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *shuffles in over a year late with a final chapter*
> 
> So, 2020. That happened, huh?
> 
> This was never gonna be one of my popular fics, but for the small handful of you enjoying it, I am SO sorry for how long this took me! I got stuck on like, literally the last few paragraphs for the LONGEST time. You can thank Socially Distanced Dirk and a lot of enthusiasm from fandom buds for the renewed burst of Dirk inspo to get this finished! 
> 
> Anyway, this concludes the first intro arc of my Torchwood/DGHDA crossover verse. One day down the road, I'd love to revisit it to explore some of the other character dynamics I like to play with- ESPECIALLY between Todd and Owen- but with my spoons, concentration and hand pain being what they are, I'm not making any promises. So for now, this is it. I really hope you've enjoyed coming on this little adventure with me and Mike, and you like the stage we've set for future adventures!
> 
> Also with this chapter we have FINALLY made it to the scene inspired by the wonderful illustration of marizetta! Only took two years dfjkdgfhn anyway please [go give her some love and reblogs](https://marizetta.tumblr.com/post/190001278175)!!! She more than deserves it! And this chapter we get a little more squad banter, and Mike's real intro to aliens (although a fair amount of it is borrowed from Gwen's intro, but I imagine if you're Jack and you find a system that works you might stick to it djsvdkfdfg)
> 
> Anyway, I dedicate this long overdue final chapter to the Torchwood fans still carrying a torch (heh) for these disaster gays, to the Dirk fans for being amazing and enthusiastic, to the new mods of the DGHDA Big Bang for taking it off my hands (and doing a damn fine job with it!) so I have a little more time and energy for my own projects, to my good ol' partner in crime kieren-fucking-walker for being the reason I got so invested in this crossover universe and watching lots of Torchwood with me, to my bud thats-entirely-too-much-tuna for reinvigorating my love of all things Dirk with our season 3 plans and zoom reenactment hangouts, to everyone involved the the Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture for giving me that D O P A M I N E and, of course, to marizetta, for creating the art that kicked this story off. Y'all are amazing <333
> 
> Enjoy! <3

It wasn’t that Mike _didn’t _drink, period. He would drink a modest glass or two when it was appropriate, or expected, when being the only person without a glass of wine in his hand would make him stand out. He guessed, technically, this was one of those situations. Only problem was whatever was in the glass Jack had put in front of him half an hour ago was definitely _not _wine, and Mike had kind of had enough adventure for one night.

Besides, he wanted to keep a clear head. This was a conversation he was gonna want to remember, in _precise _detail.

“This is- oh, man, this is a _lot,” _he laughed, shaking his head and tapping his untouched glass. “I just… _wow.”_

It was a lot of information to take in at once, and _way _more than Mike was expecting to get, but Jack had been fielding his questions with grace and only moderate avoidance. He’d told him about his team- _Team Torchwood. _Owen, Tosh, Gwen, some other guy called Ianto. He’d mentioned the former Torchwood One, the one-man Three, the misplaced Four- seriously, how do you _lose _a whole division? Then there was the creature they’d seen tonight in the alley, _the weevil, _and the countless others lurking under Cardiff in the subterranean labyrinth of the sewer system. Jack told him all about Torchwood itself; outside the government, beyond the police. How they helped lost extraterrestrials return home or assimilate on Earth, or fought off the dangerous ones. How they unearthed discarded alien tech and investigated it, adapted it, arming humankind for the future while the majority went about their daily lives above Torchwood’s head, totally oblivious to the invisible wars under their feet.

Mike may have pinched himself a couple times. Just to check he wasn’t dreaming.

“So,” Jack grinned, sipping his margarita. “That about cover all your questions?”

“Not even _close.”_

Laughing, Jack leaned back casually against the bar, his shirt pulling just a little taut against his chest. Which Mike did _not _stare at, at all. “Well. How ‘bout _I _ask the questions for a while. I think perhaps you owe me a couple answers, too.”

Of course. He shouldn’t have expected all that info to come for free. Swallowing dryly- and gradually losing his resolve to abstain from the mystery drink- Mike nodded. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, shoot.”

“So. _Mike. _There a last name with that?”

He probably shouldn’t give his real name. But if this guy’s agency had _half _the resources he made out they did, he could find Mike’s full name in like thirty seconds anyway. “It’s- it’s Assistent.”

Jack arched an eyebrow._ “Assistent?”_

“Yeah. Unfortunately.”

“Well, least you’ve got a sense of humour about it,” said Jack, smirking. “I appreciate that. I won’t even make a joke- _for now. _So, you’re pretty interested in this stuff, right? The _outta this world _stuff.”

Totally forgetting that ‘playing it cool’ was a thing, Mike laughed. “Uh, _yeah! _Only since I could _read!”_

“Sci-fi nerd, huh?”

Collecting himself- kinda- Mike cleared his throat and shrugged. “Uh, guess I dabble.”

“Look into this stuff a lot?”

“I do my homework.”

“And it brought you to _Cardiff. _All the way from the good old U.S of A. California, right?”

Mike blinked. “That’s… that’s where I flew from, yeah…”

“After driving allllll the way from Indiana, boy- must have been one hell of a gas bill!”

“How did you know-?”

Jack grinned, and though his face was warm his eyes were like steel. _“Did my homework. _So, California- that about where you meet up with your new English friend?”

“Not on purpose or anything,” Mike hastily clarified- he was starting to think that John Hart may be an incriminating guy to seem too cosy with. “He saw me on a rock and somehow we ended up in a bar!”

“Yeah, that checks out,” Jack snorted. “Never could resist a pretty face.”

“And then…” Mike blushed. The whole conversation had been kinda weird and awkward, and he didn’t really wanna recount it. “We just got to talking, y’know. About, uh. Interests.”

“I can guess what _he _was interested in,” said Jack, giving Mike a suggestive once-over. “And we’ve already covered yours. Then what?”

“Then he said… stuff.” Mike’s cheeks were burning. “Uh… confusing stuff. Convincing, though, I mean, I almost…”

For the first time, Jack started to look concerned. “Almost what?”

Fiddling with a loose thread on his sweater, Mike shrugged helplessly. “He was _real _charismatic, okay? And, y’know, c-cute, or whatever.”

_“Please _tell me you didn’t let him kiss you.”

“What? Uh, well, no. N-_not _that it’s any of your business!”

Jack let out a breath. “Good. That could have been a whole other… nevermind. So, he made a pass and then you, what, climbed out the bathroom window?”

_“No, _I- he said some stuff that was, well, kinda shitty, and… I left.”

“Brave choice, glad that worked out for you- but I’m guessing that’s not _all _he said.”

“Yeah, he- he mentioned this place. And you. Uh, not _you, _specifically but like, _you _you. The collective you.”

“In what context?”

“...I don’t wanna say.”

“Because he asked you to spy on us?”

Mike spluttered, panic swelling. “Wha- _no! _Oh, my god, no, he- he was just being real judgy about your sex lives! Geez, I- I _swear _I’m not a spy!”

“I sure hope not; you’re _terrible _under pressure. Seriously, so many tells. Never play poker.”

Mike didn’t wanna sigh in relief just yet, but… “You- you believe me?”

“For now.”

Better than nothing, _now _he could sigh in relief. “I- geez. Okay, cool. Cool beans.” He immediately winced. _Cool beans? _Fuck.

Jack raised his eyebrow, but thankfully didn’t pounce on him for the dorkiness. “Okay, so. Say I believe you just jumped on a plane on a tip from a handsome devil in a bar. Pretty impulsive. You an impulsive kinda guy, Mike?”

He almost laughed. “Uh- uh, not, not really.”

“So what changed?”

“I. I kinda quit my job. And I didn’t have anything else to do, so…”

“Why’d you quit?”

“That’s… classified.”

“Aw, don’t leave me hanging!”

“No, like _really _classified.” He widened his eyes, silently begging Jack to get it, tongue heavy in his mouth with all the shit he _couldn’t _say. “Like… _you-_level classified.”

Oh, he shouldn’t have said that. He could see the intrigue lighting up Jack’s sharp eyes. “No kidding?”

“No, unfortunately… look, I really _can’t _tell you. I’ve already said more than I… Yeah. I saw some… saw some shit and, I dunno, it didn’t feel right.”

“So you’re _not _into weird.”

“Oh, I’m _into _weird!” It took a hot second for his brain to catch up with his mouth. “N-not like- I mean- _crap-”_

“Hey, no judgement here.”

His face was on fire, but he pressed on. “I- okay. Yeah, it’s… The weird wasn’t the problem, more. Um. The protocol. I guess I… didn’t agree with company policy.”

Jack didn’t reply except for a slow, thoughtful nod and some _intense _eye contact. Mike couldn’t help squirming a little under it. _Man, _he needed a drink.

He glanced down at the mystery booze on the bar. It was looking a whole lot more inviting than before. Well. He guessed it would be rude not to have a _little _sip.

Except the second he lifted the glass from the counter, Jack’s hand appeared on top of it.

Blinking rapidly, Mike let the hand push the glass gently back down to the bartop before he looked back up at Jack’s face, bewildered. Said face was, as ever, carefully unreadable, but there was _something _behind his eyes. Something conflicted. Something… _curious. _Whatever it was, it was nothing short of electric in those ice blue eyes, and Mike shuddered as he felt himself breaking out in goosebumps beneath it.

After a hot second, Jack seemed to reach some kinda resolve- and the dazzling smile he gave Mike was almost enough to distract from the casual way he slipped the untouched drink out of his grasp.

“Y’know, I got better stuff at my place,” said Jack, carefully blasé. “How about it?”

Mike froze. “Y-your place? W-why?”

“This place is a dive. Besides, night’s still young- bet there’s a whole lotta things I could show you.”

_“Show _me?”

“If that’s what you want.” He winked, and Mike went hot. “So?”

Mike gaped at him, blood rushing. The offer was pretty daunting- in part because he wasn’t actually sure _what _was being offered. The words, the body language, the _Jack-_ness of it all implied that what waited on the other end of that offer was, well, naked stuff. A lot of it. Which, which, _yeah, _sure, sounded _nice, _but he was being careful about getting it on with random bar dudes, right? Isn’t that a thing he decided on at some point?

But when he thought about the _other _stuff they’d been discussing, the questions Jack had fielded, the way his ears perked (figuratively) when Mike implied they had something in common… maybe when he said he could _show him things _he meant, like, _alien _things. Weird, out of this world things- and _not _in a kinky way. Well. _Maybe _in a kinky way. And there was the problem- it was an important distinction, right? No _way _should he just agree to go to a secondary location with this guy ‘til he had some clue what he was agreeing to.

Except the way his heart was pounding under Jack’s gaze kept telling him that it really _wasn’t _all that important. The warm flutter of anticipation in his gut didn’t seem to care much, either.

He gave Jack a once-over, the cut of his handsome figure in that coat, the open body language as he patiently awaited an answer. None of the same _shady _energy of John Hart, but at least twice the mystery.

Maybe he was just being dumb and naive again.

Or maybe, just maybe, he’d stumbled into a rare win-win scenario.

Blood rushing, self-preservation instincts going haywire, Mike’s heart reached up and nodded his head for him. “Okay.”

Jack’s grin bloomed, a more genuine one this time, and he nonchalantly reached over the bar to pour their drinks down the grate. _“Excellent _choice. C’mon- I’ve got a bottle of scotch in the cabinet with our name on it. Or maybe you’re more of a coffee guy- I know just the man for the job.”

Mike stood up, picking up his coat and beat-up grocery bag with an eagerness that should probably be embarrassing. But hey, he was on his way to either see some legit aliens, or to get lucky with an insanely hot dude.

If he couldn’t be a little jazzed _now, _when the hell could he?

“Oh, you are freaking _kidding _me!”

Everyone turned to look at him yelling, but he couldn’t give a shit right now. Because _hello, _he was standing on a fake flagstone slash _freaking _invisible elevator, while a guy who could best be described by the phrase ‘total dreamboat’ held his waist, _for safety, _and cutely humble-bragged about the view. And _boy _what a view it was.

“This is- this is- _wow.”_

“Beats your old office, huh?” Jack teased, lightly pinching his hip.

_“Heck yeah,” _Mike breathed. Honestly, that was one of the most depressing things about Blackwing- for all the weird and wonderful stuff inside, it kinda looked and felt like a creepy, sterile hospital in a horror movie. This, now _this _was the good shit. Sure, it was kinda gloomy, and pretty obviously patched together with junk in places, but Mike couldn’t take his eyes off of it. From the weird plants on the mezzanine to the base of the sculptural water tower looming and rippling at the centre of it all, there was always something to catch the eye. Something cool or confusing or weird. Something that opened up a thousand more questions. It felt _interesting, _and _adventurous _and _curious _and… and weirdly _homey._

_SQQQQUAAAARRRRRRRRR!!!!_

And terrifying. Fuck, _definitely _terrifying. “What the-?!”

“Woah, easy,” said Jack, holding him tight before he toppled himself off the platform. “Don’t splatter yourself before you see the rest.”

Mike stared after the source of the noise- an enormous, leathery creature gliding past the water tower- in horrified fascination. “Is- is that a-?”

“Pterodactyl,” two bored voices chimed in distantly.

“Pte-pterodactyl. Right.” He laughed breathlessly. “Of course it is.”

“Stumbled through the rift,” said Jack, audibly grinning. “Bam, free guard dog.”

“The rift?”

“Ah, did I forget to cover that?” He chuckled. “God, the opening schpiel gets longer every time, I can never keep track. There’s a rift in space and time, right under this city. All kinds of stuff falls through- tech, debris, creatures-”

“‘S why we get all the _fun,_” Owen quipped dryly, from where he was tinkering with some kinda silver gizmo across the hub.

“It’s why guarding this city is a full time job,” Jack seconded, giving Mike’s waist a squeeze as the elevator finally clicked into its dock on the ground. “After you.”

Grateful for the supporting hands, Mike gingerly alighted the paving slab, finding his feet on the concrete floor. Now they stood at the lowest part of the basin-shaped main hub, the wall of water looming imposingly above them. Free of the fear of falling, Mike took a moment for a slow turn, greedily taking in every inch in eyeshot.

“Still on duty, Jack?” Gwen called from her vantage point on a raised walkway- not the highest in the room, just kind of a step connecting the two slightly different levels of the floorplan. “Or were you hoping to have the place to yourself?”

_“Gwen,” _he whined, leaving Mike’s side to jog towards the staircase leading to her. “What kinda boy do you think I am?”

“Do you really want me to answer that?” she teased with a cute toothy grin.

“I could give it a go,” came another voice; one Mike hadn’t heard before. Soft, lilting Welsh, like Gwen but a little softer, a little cleaner, and a fair bit deeper.

Jack’s grin grew in size with a gleam in his eye to match. “I guess you would have some stories to tell.” He turned to catch Mike’s eye and nodded towards the stairs. “C’mon. Time for some real introductions.”

Taking the stairs in three bounds, Jack followed Gwen along the walkway. Mike followed with apprehension, gingerly mounting the short metal staircase to higher ground, hand skimming the taut chain banister. It took him to a slightly raised part of the hub, and if it weren't for the desks encrusted with blinking computer screens and whatever the heck Owen was tinkering with, it would look just kinda... normal. Chill, even. Just a generic lounge, with a worn-out old couch and a coffee table covered in empty pizza boxes and miscellaneous tools in varying degrees of alien-ness. It wasn't intimidating in and of itself, aside from maybe the huge rubber stamp style ‘TORCHWOOD’ printed on the tiled curvature above the couch.

No, the daunting aspect was the assembled team, all watching him curiously- or pretending not to be. Gulping, Mike hurried along to loiter just behind Jack and offered them a nervous wave. Then changed to a salute, because maybe that would be more appropriate? "Uh. Hi, guys."

The judgy look Owen gave told Mike it probably wasn't as appropriate as he'd hoped. But it was too late now, he was riding this salute train to the bitter end.

"Michael Assistent," said Jack, slinging a companionable arm over his shoulder- which might have been comforting, if it didn't drag him out from behind the shelter of Jack's back and directly into the limelight. "Welcome to Torchwood. Great little team, huh?" He gestured towards Owen on the couch. "Owen Harper, you already know."

_"Doctor _Harper, thank you," said Owen with an unimpressed scowl. "Always forgets that bit."

Jack smiled indulgently. "Doctor Harper stitches us back together. And over here we have Toshiko Sato- resident tech wizard."

Tosh- who looked even sweeter and prettier in the light- offered him a friendly, if cautious, smile. "Lovely to meet you."

"You too," Mike mumbled, eyes flicking across the vast bank of screens in front of her. Interconnected monitors in a haphazard rig, but her fingers were skating across her keyboard as quick as her eyes flitted between screens. "You rig this yourself?"

"Yes, actually- needed a little more space to work with, as you can imagine."

Mike grinned, resisting the urge to bound forward for a closer look. "It's awesome!"

Her smile turned just a little sunnier, shoulders lifting in a subtle preen. But Jack moved on with the introductions before they could go off on a cool tech tangent. "And of course, Gwen Cooper- our rock, our anchor. Newest recruit, but don't let that fool you; she keeps us right."

"Bit of perspective never hurt anyone," Gwen smiled, lightly tossing her dark, silky hair out of her eyes before holding out her hand to Mike. "Hello, sweetheart."

"H-hi," Mike took her hand gingerly. Much like it had felt earlier when offering him comfort over the unconscious body of his alien attacker, it was firm as steel and soft as silk.

"And last but _certainly_ not least," Jack continued, taking Mike's shoulders and turning him slightly to face the last person in the room, his voice softening around the final name. "Ianto Jones."

The man inclined his head politely, staying where he was. He was a good looking guy- Mike's mind supplied the word _pretty_. Young, possibly younger than Mike himself, although none of them looked like they could be much older than thirty at most. Unlike the others- aside from maybe Jack, but in a different way- he was professionally dressed, elegantly clad in a fitted three-piece black suit over a pink shirt and striped tie. He surveyed Mike with a welcoming smile, and a gleam in his eye. Exactly what _kind_ of gleam, Mike couldn't be too sure; he was either plotting a prank, or judging his wardrobe. Mike knew which would hurt his feelings more. "Evening," Ianto greeted in that soft Welsh lilt, hands tucked neatly in his pockets.

“Ianto makes sure we get where we need to be,” said Jack, unmistakably fond. “Keeps the schedules synced, keeps the lights on, keeps the coffee coming- and it’s _damn _good coffee.”

“Well, I know what you keep me around for,” Ianto said lightly, with a polite smile and a glance at Jack that felt a lot more _meaningful _than the words out of his mouth. Heavy, loaded but… playful? Microexpressions upon microexpressions. Mike couldn’t help wondering just how many things the man was saying without words, and how fluent these other guys were in his language.

The rich, warm chuckle Jack gave in response said he had at least a passing comprehension.

The roll of Owen’s eyes suggested he had a few phrases down, too. “So, does he get the tour,” the grouchy doctor asked, setting his handful of twisted silver aside in favour of snagging a slice of pizza. “Or is that gonna be a waste of everyone’s time?”

Mike opened his mouth in protest, but Jack beat him to him. “Jury’s still out. But hey, we’ve got nothing else going on.” He turned to Mike with a smile, clapping him on the shoulder. “How ‘bout it, Mikey? Wanna see the rest?”

Mike reigned in the impulse to yell _duh-doy! _Like a grade schooler. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, cool, I mean, _whatever.”_

Owen’s snort and the look he shared with Gwen showed just how unconvinced they were by his attempt to be cool. Tosh looked a little amused herself, and Ianto was… still perfectly unreadable. Okay. Great.

Jack, enthusiasm unaffected, grinned and gave Mike’s shoulder a pat before dropping his hand lower, a _lot _lower, to rest at his lower back and guide him. “Then walk this way, kiddo. ‘Cause we got a whole lotta ground to cover.”

The tour was a _lot _to take in, all the various rooms and features of the hub seemingly stitched together like a haphazard utilitarian patchwork. Fortunately, Mike was nothing if not a good listener and a quick study, and with all his focus attuned to absorbing every ounce of info the layout slid effortlessly into his mind.

Jack steered him around the ups and downs of the place, his hand rarely drifting far from Mike, lingering at his back or shoulders or wrist like he was wary of letting him run for it. Or he just liked being close. With a guy as friendly, flirty and subtly shrewd as Jack, it was hard to tell. But he kept his smile throughout as he drew Mike's attention to things, as he patiently pointed out the sunken lab slash medibay attached to the living room and the small indoor greenhouse above it- both of which, apparently, were widely considered to be Owen’s domain and not for messing with unless you wanted a snarky English man making your life a misery. Mike, entranced by the alien plants through the glass, reluctantly took the hint and backed away.

Then there was the kitchen, which was largely stocked with takeout leftovers and plastered with passive-aggressive post-its in various different people’s handwriting- aside from the coffeemaker which was in perfect condition and polished to gleam. That, apparently, wasn’t to be touched unless you wanted a surprisingly devious _Welsh _man making your life a misery. There were a lot of highly specific territories at play here, and Mike committed them dutifully to memory.

From there Jack went on to show him the shooting range, a daunting but practical arched stretch of cavern, bricked up and symmetrical like the remains of an underground train tunnel. He skimmed over the ‘boring’ rooms, supply closets and boiler rooms, although from the quick glimpses Mike got at both he could spot at least three things that were sorta _odd _and would have warranted a closer look, but it would have been rude to impose so he let it go. For now. Besides, he got distracted pretty quickly by the weapon storage and archives, both of which were crammed with so many awesome things he didn’t know where to look. He wasn’t allowed to _touch _any of it, but he was cool with that; knowing his luck he’d blow something up or turn himself into a frog.

After that was the conference room; pretty standard, nothing interesting. The emotional whiplash of going from that to the fucking _morgue _was pretty intense. He stared up at the rows and rows of neatly numbered square compartments in the wall, _every _wall, going up higher than seemed strictly practical. No names, just numbers. He wondered, anxiously, how many of them were filled, and what with. It would be pretty naive to discount the idea that one of them might be waiting for him.

_Don’t be dumb, Michael, _he chastised himself. _If they were gonna kill you they’d probably disfigure you and throw you in the sea. They don’t want your murdered ass lying in their morgue, they’d wanna ditch the evidence._

_Shockingly_, that thought didn’t make him feel any better. He swallowed his fear and awkwardly shuffled along in Jack’s footsteps. It was too late to get antsy now.

“One more stop,” said Jack, eyeing Mike over his shoulder. “Ready?”

Mike wasn’t sure what he was about to see, but he knew it was gonna be something he couldn’t _un_see. But heck, he’d come this far. He shifted from foot to foot and nodded, hoping he didn’t betray his anxiety.

Jack just looked at him a moment, searching, before he nodded and towed Mike the last few feet through a stretch of drab, close brick corridor and down some steel steps. It was darker down here, older. Only a reinforced steel door stood between them and their destination. Mike could suddenly feel, tangibly, the weight of the thousands of tonnes of earth above their heads. The earth or, or _something _was about to come crashing down on him, that much was obvious. Mike steeled himself as the heavy door gave way for Jack with a combination of card swipes, codes and bolts, and timidly stepped through the entryway as Jack beckoned him with a flourish.

Concrete walls, shallow and arched and clearly older than most of the other rooms in the compound. A small shiver of claustrophobic anxiety rippled down his spine. On his right several heavy-duty metal doors were set into the wall looking unsettlingly indestructible, and on the left the tunnel-like room was subdivided by perpendicular walls, jutting out roughly every six feet or so, the sections they formed fronted by clear, scuffed glass. The glass, though punctured by a square foot of regular holes at about face level, gave the impression of being as immovable as the ancient concrete it was housed in.

Mike's stomach dropped as he walked, slowly, along the line of compartments. Glass fronts, sealed matching doors, benches and buckets stuffed into corners, security cameras. He knew what he was looking at, too damn well. These weren't compartments, they were _cells_.

He swallowed, turning slowly to face Jack, who just met him with a patient look and a nod towards the final cell in the row. Watching. Waiting.

Not wanting to lose his cool now, Mike bit his lip and turned, numbly walking in the direction indicated. He was barely looking at the cells now, heart pounding and ears ringing. They weren't quite like the cells in Blackwing- mainly because it was obvious what they were. There was no pretence, no beds with pressed sheets, no built-in shelves or drawers for changes of clothes and personal possessions, not even bathrooms. He didn't know if that was better or worse. It was squalid, claustrophobic, but he guessed if you found yourself in one of these cells you'd know where you stood with your captors.

If you had the capacity to know _anything_, which, seeing the sole occupant of the end cell, maybe wasn't a standard.

"That," Mike stammered, steps faltering. "Is that-?"

"The one that attacked you? Yeah. Don't worry, it's still sedated, barely knows you're here."

Mike wasn't so sure about that. Though the creature didn't move its body or head he could feel its beady eyes following his every step. Part of him wanted to run for the safety of the hall. The other, louder part was drawn closer, pulled to the creature by some strange gravity of its own. As it came into closer view, no longer obscured by the concrete partition it leaned against, Mike's busy brain catalogued every detail of it. Every line of its ridged face, its distended, toothy muzzle, its prominent brow and every thin, bedraggled hair clinging to its smooth scalp. And every second he did so he could feel it watching, cataloguing right back.

"This is... oh, man. this..."

He was jarred back into reality by the grating sound of a battered metal foldaway chair being popped out and set up in front of the cell, and when he looked up Jack was standing behind it expectantly. "C'mon. have a seat. Look as long as you want."

Mike collapsed into the chair with minimal prompting, his legs already weak. Closer to eye level with the hunched creature now, he remembered some scrap of manners. "Is it- sorry, is he a he?"

"What?"

"The-" Mike, unsure quite what to call it, gestured vaguely at the creature. "A he? A she? Uh, they, maybe?"

Jack looked a little bemused, as if that wasn't a question anyone had ever thought to ask. "I, uh. Don't think it gets the personal pronoun thing. And far as we can tell weevils are monogender."

“Is that really what they’re called? Kinda… unflattering.”

Jack snorted. "Well, it’s what we call 'em. No idea what they're really called, can't exactly _ask_. They can't speak, pretty sure they don't understand any traditional form of language, either. Can't say we've had much time or cause to look into their communication, but maybe now this guy’s crashing here we’ll revisit it.”

"What- what _are_ they, I mean, where do they-?"

"Space."

Mike looked up at him, wide-eyed. Jack chuckled. "Well, _somewhere_ in space. Maybe not even this dimension. They fall through the rift. Most of the time when they get here they keep to the sewers, living on... well. It's the sewers. You can guess. Occasionally though one of them goes rogue, comes to the surface, causes trouble. That's where we come in; try and neutralise it before someone gets hurt." He clapped a hand on Mike's shoulder, pretty close to his neck, thumb barely teasing the collar of his shirt. "Luckily tonight, we did."

Mike swallowed, staring at those teeth, remembering how they looked lunging for his throat. "G-good timing."

"I’ll say," said Jack quietly, hand lingering a second longer before peeling away. "Look into its eyes a while. You might as well, it’s not going anywhere."

"Why- I mean-"

"Michael," said Jack, and for the barest second Mike felt his hand hovering at the back of his neck, so close he could've reached out and teased the short strands of hair at his nape. "What is it?"

"A- a weevil."

"And?"

Mike stared the creature down, his throat tight. "...An alien."

Jack's hand pulled away and so did the rest of him, his heat slipping away from Mike's back. "An alien. It’s here, and it's real." His footsteps echoed in the arched chamber, his voice quiet but booming in its ricochet. "Take a moment. Think about it. Look at it. Trust me, you need that. When you're done, come find me in my office. You forget where that is, wave at a camera; we'll find you."

Mike nodded, barely conscious of doing so. It's like his body and his brain were at a total disconnect. His body was slumped in an uncomfortable chair, in an old concrete dungeon. His mind was with the creature, and only the creature, searching their eyes.

He didn't know what he was looking for. Something human, maybe. A glimpse of knowing, or understanding, or fear or anger. He didn't find it, but he didn't find total _vacancy_, either, it wasn't like staring into Eddie Goldberg’s guinea pig's eyes in fifth grade and feeling like he was staring into the eyes of a creature that hadn't had a single thought in its life. There was something there, in the shadows at the back of their skull. Something dark, and quiet, dormant for now but lurking, ready to jump out. And around that, that small glint of light, of awareness there was... black. Endless, endless black like a starless sky. A vast, unknowable maw, drawing him in, waiting to close around him.

It was unfakeable. This wasn't a man in a halloween mask, or a radiation victim or even a mutated animal. This... this was like nothing that he'd ever seen in this world. Possibly like nothing that had ever _existed_ in this world. There was nothing familiar hidden in those eyes, nothing earthly. It was impossible.

It was alien.

And it was _real_.

"You're real," he breathed, fear and awe and sheer excitement bubbling up in his lungs, not even the terror of the creature's jaws enough to quash the exhilaration. "You're- you're really _real!"_

They looked back, eyes dark and unknowable but riveted on Mike, as if they understood him. As if they cared what he had to say.

Mike stared at them, at the slight scrabble of their limp fingers scratching the glass, and grimaced. "You... you don't like it in here, huh, buddy?"

The weevil didn’t reply verbally, but they did curl their lip back from their teeth.

"Yeah... I'm, uh, not so crazy about glass cages, either."

They did make a sound then, a low, guttural groan. Fear and pity warred in Mike's chest, his hands clenching on his knees.

"What... what do they do to you here?"

The weevil didn’t seem to know. Mike wasn’t totally sure he wanted to, either.

He knew what he _did_ want to know, though.

Freaking. _Everything_.

There were many things Mike had had the importance of drilled into him in his army days. Punctuality, loyalty, endurance. Another, one which hadn't really mattered until his brief and ultimately disastrous stint in a small position of semi-command, was the importance of announcing oneself with confidence. Gone were the days of Mike entering rooms with a slightly lowered posture, saying 'knock knock' out loud instead of actually knocking on people’s expensive doors. He still relapsed sometimes, when his nerves were high, but the ruthless barking of his supervisor had more or less Pavlov’d him out of the habit.

He channelled every one of those drills and tirades into his approach, now. He'd seen this place and the way these people worked, and the last thing he wanted was for them to think he wasn't strong enough to be here. Locating Jack's office quickly he knocked three times, strongly, with his actual hand, and waited for the 'come on in' before turning the handle and striding with all the purpose he could muster.

"Captain, I must request that-o-_oh_, sorry, um-"

Jack grinned at him with kiss-pink lips. "Don’t apologise, I gave you the invite."

Ianto, looking decidedly more ruffled than Jack did, somehow managed to get himself back to immaculate order in under two seconds. "Yes, you did," he said pointedly, raising his eyebrows at his reclining boss. "Perhaps, one of these days, a spot of hesitation might be nice."

"Hey, I got excited," Jack defended, playfully re-messing Ianto's perfect tie.

Mike's bravado, hastily cobbled together for this confrontation, was in very real danger of collapsing like a house of cards under the force of his flustered embarrassment. He picked it up, dusted it off brusquely and pointedly avoided looking at either Ianto or Jack below the belt, before he could get more distracted by the flash of cotton poking through an undone fly. None of his business, moving on. "I, uh- wanted to speak with you, Captain." He caught Ianto's eye and winced apologetically. "Uh, in private, if that's... cool."

"Certainly," said Ianto, light and gracious as he floated with admirable composure towards the door. "Got him all warmed up for you."

"Um."

"Don't be a tease, Ianto," Jack chuckled. "And uh, hey- how ‘bout some coffee?"

"I live to serve." Either Ianto was trying less hard to be implacable or Mike was starting to get the hang of his language, but that comment sounded more obviously sarcastic. "Usual, then." He turned his attention to Mike. "How do you take yours?"

Between his pre-prepared 'hire me' speech rattling round his head and the embarrassment of the last few minutes, Mike had all but forgotten what coffee even was. "Uh-"

"Never mind, I’ll guess," said Ianto, with an almost imperceptible smirk. He glanced between Mike and Jack one last time, with a politely suggestive 'he's all yours', and disappeared the way Mike had come with barely a sound.

Mike, utterly wrong-footed, turned to Jack with an apology already on his lips. "I-I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-"

“Don't sweat it, Mikey," said Jack, leaning back in his desk chair with his hands behind his head. "If Ianto and I had a strict 'no interruptions' rule in place, well- let's just say we'd miss out on a lot of missions. C’mon, sit. I wanna hear all about your date with Gertrude."

Mike, halfway into the chair by the end of that sentence, faltered a litte. "'Gertrude'?"

"The weevil.” He shrugged. “It's a work in progress."

"Oh. Um. Great? They’re not exactly a conversationalist."

"Typical weevil, leaving us to do all the work. So. I believe you had something to say to me?"

Mike nodded, furrowing his brow and scrambling for his carefully planned speech. Unfortunately, he only managed to grab one loose end of it, and what came out of his mouth was a short and random: "I was in the army."

Jack raised his eyebrow. "...So I gathered."

Blushing, Mike fumbled for the rest. Screw the order, he just needed more info. "Uh, four years. Completed basic training, obviously, worked my way up to Second Lieutenant before I left. Well, uh, technically, I was discharged, but they said I made an amazing recovery and I could have gone back in the field, but they offered me another job- I, I mean, I've seen combat, but the last few years I've been employed in the bureaucratic sector, in a... very _specialised_ division.” He pulled in a ragged breath, raising his finger as if he was about to deliver a confident lecture when in reality he was jittery with nerves and realising awkwardly that he’d never really finished his attempt to sit down and was looming like a weirdo over Jack’s desk. “Look, I've got seven years military experience, one in active duty, proficient in most standard issue firearms and a pretty high tolerance for _out of the ordinary_ mission parameters, all of which is to say... can I have a job, please?"

_ [Art by Marizetta](https://marizetta.tumblr.com/post/190001278175) _

Silence fell. Jack leaned his elbows on his desk, interlocking his fingers and resting his chin thoughtfully on top of them.

Then a slow clap rang out, startling Mike into whirling round.

"Nice speech, newbie," Owen drawled, while beside him Gwen attempted to hide a snort in her coffee cup and then immediately looked apologetic about it.

"Out, both of you," said Jack, firm and bored. "You can play with the new kid later."

"That a promise, then, Jack?" asked Gwen, with a meaningful look.

"Depends. His interview's not over. Go on, scram."

The eavesdroppers fled, the door clicking shut behind them, and Mike attempted to get his burning cheeks under control.

"Ignore them- Owen likes to stir the pot. And Gwen... well, let's just say Owen's not the best influence."

“Sounds, uh. Sounds like a handful."

"He's the problem child I never asked for," Jack agreed with a sage nod, twirling a pen between his fingers. "So. You want a job."

"Uh." _Uh?!_ Geez, _for once in your life be confident._ "Yes. I do."

"I’m not sure we've got a vacancy."

Mike sank, finally, into his chair, although he felt twitchy enough to bounce right out of it again. “Can you… check?"

Jack grinned, eyes sparkling. He was messing with him. "Well. I guess I could find something in the budget somewhere. But, uh, you understand I can't throw that kind of change around without good reason, so we'd better get serious right now."

He leaned in closer. Mike held his ground, keeping his back straight, chin high and face level as those steely eyes met his.

"I’ve gotta ask you, Michael, if this is what you really want- and before you rush to agree, hear me out,” he said, swiftly interrupting Mike’s instinctual _heck yes!_ “You've seen a glimpse of how we operate here. The five of us against the universe, that's it. And the universe doesn't always send us its best. Round here, through the rift, we get... scraps. Flotsam, jetsam, other people's garbage. It's hard work, often unpleasant, sometimes _boring_, always dangerous. And the only way out once you're in, is _this-_" he reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a bottle of small white pills. "Or a body bag."

Mike peered at the bottle warily. "What is that?"

"Home recipe. We call it Retcon. Full disclosure, Mike, you nearly took a dose today."

Blinking, Mike looked back up to Jack’s face as a piece fell into place. "My drink. You stopped me before I could take a sip."

"You catch on quick. Truth is, Mike, we can't afford to have this kinda stuff getting out. I wrote you off, earlier, as just some tourist we had to wipe and set loose. But, you made me second guess myself- kudos, by the way. But I should tell you now, if this uh, _interview _doesn't go great-" he gave the bottle a shake. "I won't hesitate a second time."

Mike knew better than to challenge him, or ask how he planned on making him take that stuff now he knew their game. This guy wasn't stupid, and he'd done this before. It's not like Mike could resolve to never eat or drink again in his life. "Good to know," he rasped.

"I'm not trying to threaten you, Mike. I'm kinda trying to help you, honestly; this doesn't have to be the bad ending. If you decide right now that this isn't the life for you, you can take it as an out. Tomorrow you can wake up in your hotel room, awake and refreshed and with no memory of any of us, thinking you just lost a night to one bottle too many. Some might argue that's easier than the same fate months or years down the line."

The idea of forgetting this, _any _of it, was so horrifying to Mike that he couldn’t formulate a response.

"Thought you might not like that one," said Jack with a sigh, putting the bottle back where he found it. "So. If Retcon isn't an option, let's say you stay with us. It's full time work, we alternate days off but more often than not you’ll have to come in anyway. The pay is, well, not half bad, but maybe not worth the life risk. You work closely with us, to neutralise alien threats and utilise their tech for the good of humanity. If you're lucky, you last a few good years before bad luck catches up to you and you die in action. If you're _un_lucky, you're gone within the week. That will be it, for you, out there in the world. Your body, your belongings, they all stay with us. If you survive long enough to decide you'd like a retirement, well, then we're back to the Retcon, and all your work with us, however many years that covers, is gone for good, with a story made up to fill in the gaps. Clear so far?"

Clear and terrifying, but Mike nodded. He guessed he could understand, this was... were aliens _more_ top secret than psychics and human rights violations? Tough question, but definitely not something these people would want to take chances with.

"Guess I'm not really selling it, but you get why I have to make sure you're serious. We have fun here, Mike, we do. Those people downstairs, they're _my _people, and we have each others’ backs. We've seen each other through violence, loss, the annual Christmas party, the works. But this is serious work, often thankless, and the truth is that, ultimately, none of us will survive it forever.” He leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms. “Any questions?"

Mike thought for a moment, and Jack didn't rush him. Eventually, he nodded. "Three."

"Shoot."

"Do _you_ like this job?"

Jack barked out a laugh, rocking back dangerously on his chair. "Yeah. Yeah, fucking love this job. But, uh, I'm not exactly your typical guy."

Mike nodded thoughtfully. Yeah, he kinda figured that much. "Cool. Question two- and this one's _real_ important, okay?"

Jack obligingly put on a more serious face and settled his chair.

"The aliens- the ones you catch alive, like, um, Gertrude... what do you do with them?"

"Kinda depends- sometimes we can release them, if we determine them to not be a threat. If they are, and there's no way around it, well... sometimes, we have to make a hard choice."

"But you don't like…” He swallowed. “_Experiment_ on them, right?"

The comparison was unavoidable in his mind, looking at that glass compartment and its identical neighbours. Mike wanted to be here more than anything, wanted to see _everything _the universe had to offer, but he couldn't stand on the outside of the glass cells again. He wouldn't.

Jack's expression softened, infinitesimally. "We try to avoid it. Our job, on a good day, is getting these things either back home or integrated on Earth. Sometimes we conduct autopsies, if it doesn't survive the trip here. Sometimes, when lives are at immediate risk... well, sometimes we have to compromise our own morals a bit, but none of us like when that happens. But these visitors, sentient or not, usually they wind up here by accident, and we don't want to inflict more pain. I can't guarantee we'll always get out of scrapes the strictly ethical way- hell, after a few weeks on the job we all need to reorient our moral compasses, and you will too. But I can tell you right now that I only choose the best for this team, and not one person down there will ever inflict pain or suffering on a captive without damn good reason."

It wasn’t as solid an answer as he would've liked, in a perfect world. The moral grey area there yawned wide, panic setting in that this was just the top of a slippery slope and three months from now he could be watching this guy waterboard an alien tourist and Mike would be stuck again, powerless to do anything without risking death or mind wipes. This wasn't a temp job, and if he decided to stay he was in it for good, no matter what. That was the kind of commitment worth being sure about.

But _god_, he was closer than ever. Everything currently known to only the most select of mankind, about space and the stars and whoever else was out there, all within reach. Was that worth finding himself in that same sucky situation again? Was _anything?_

Mike met Jack's gaze and didn't back down, searching Jack as much as Jack was searching him. The guy kept a tight lid on things, but meeting his eyes now... Mike trusted him. Maybe not with everything, not with his own deepest darkest secrets or even his apartment key, but he trusted his words, his stance. He trusted that when Jack said cruelty wouldn't fly here, he meant it. Maybe that wasn't a guarantee- Mike knew better than most how one man's kindness could be another man's cruelty, and how much people were willing to put another human being through if they thought the ends justified the means. Mike had a dead brother, a shoulder full of shrapnel and a cavernous mental vault of government atrocities to prove it. but...

What if...

The door creaked. Mike didn't turn to look as careful, measured footsteps walked in accompanied by the slightest clink of ceramic. Jack's eyes flickered away from Mike, and the hard line of his mouth broke into an easy grin. "There he is- you're a beautiful Welsh angel, Ianto Jones."

"Quite an atmosphere in here," said Ianto, holding out his tray to Jack as the captain took the mug closest to him without a second glance. "Reckon I’m just in time. Big decisions being made, I take it?"

"And big questions being asked," said Jack, sipping his piping hot coffee with an _'aaahhh' _of approval. "Speaking of- you said you had three of 'em, Mikey?"

Mike took the cup offered to him with a polite smile, taking an absentminded sip. The taste threw him for a loop and he stared down at the nearly black surface of the liquid. "Is- is this butter coffee?"

Ianto shrugged slightly, folding the now empty tray under his arm. "I had a hunch."

It was a _good_ hunch. Mike didn't drink it all that often anymore, but this stuff had saved his life more than a few times on early military mornings and it was just about the only guaranteed pick-me-up in his arsenal. An uncannily good guess. Mike narrowed his eyes at Ianto slightly, racking his brain for any record of some kinda holistic barista in the Blackwing files and coming up empty. "Uh. Thanks. Yeah, I love this stuff."

“I take it that wasn't your third question," Jack teased, sipping his own drink.

Mike snorted, shaking his head. "Uh, no, not quite."

"So? What is it?"

Mike looked down at his improbably perfect coffee. Then up, past the politely entertained expression of Ianto and the expectant gaze of Jack, catching a glimpse of the hub through the round window behind Jack’s desk and mentally following their tour route, between rooms and faces, the strange shapes of alien leaves, the small, proud smile on a tech genius' lips, the thousand yard stare of a creature from out of this world.

He clutched his coffee to his chest, and smiled shyly.

"When can I start?"

**2 MONTHS LATER**

The door to the hub- the _real _door, the non-scenic route- sure was a noisy thing. The beeps of the keypad, the clank of the mechanisms, the groaning lurch of the enormous gear-shaped slab rolling open to admit anything up to about the size of a small caravan. Which pretty much covered everything Mike had seen, so far; anything bigger than that, he guessed they’d have to hope they could find some way to deal with it that didn't involve bringing it home. The first few times Mike walked through this door he was _terrified_, struck by fear that the mechanism would go bust and he'd be crushed in the gear's teeth, that grating roar haunting his ears to the death.

Now he took the door, and the noise, in stride- every bit as much as he did the just as loud, just as familiar boisterous banter of Jack and Owen.

"-Admit it, Harkness, you're bloody pissed off you got overlooked for a change," Owen crowed, grin practically face-splitting. "You think anyone who doesn't drop their knickers the second you walk in is a pod person."

"Nah, that I could deal with," Jack deflected easily, catching Owen in a headlock without slowing his pace. "When she went after _you_, now _that's_ when the alarm bells started ringing."

"Can't stand meeting a woman with taste at last, eh-"

The infinitely patient voice of Ianto Jones interrupted them. "Successful outing then, was it?"

"Got what we went for," Jack confirmed.

"And then some," added Owen, wriggling out of Jack's grasp and waving around his scrap of paper triumphantly. "Bird who called it in? _Fit_, as it turns out, and looking for some fun. My time to shine!"

"Right, good to know. So. Aliens?"

"Just the one, as it turns out- causing the havoc of ten." Jack turned around, nodding encouragingly to Mike. "Watch your step, Mikey- don't let that blanket slip."

"Way ahead of you," Mike muttered, watching both his feet and the blanket-wrapped bundle in his arms like a hawk. Misplacing either one of them could be the last clumsy mistake he ever made.

"A lot smaller than I expected," Toshiko chimed in, wandering over from her vigil at her computer bank and peering over the railing for a closer look.

"Don't underestimate it- and more importantly, don't touch it." Jack held back a moment, waiting for Mike to pass in front of him so he could steady him with a hand on his lower back. "Toshiko, we still got that bio cage in storage?"

"Saw it last week- I'll fetch it."

"Thanks- quick as you can!"

"I think it's still pretty out of it," said Mike, mostly to reassure himself. "Little guy sure tuckered himself out..."

"Food coma; we've all been there." Jack grinned, his hand briefly rubbing up Mike's back and down again. "Smart thinking, Mikey."

Mike blushed, shrugging. "Oh, it's no big-"

"I'll put the kettle on," said Ianto, passing behind them- and tracing his hand across both of their shoulders en route. "Take it that surge of rift energy was your doing, not something we have to immediately worry about?"

"Got it in one,” said Jack.

"Then you owe us details. When we're all settled in; coffee?"

"Please- and pick out some takeout menus. I dunno ‘bout you guys, but I think we deserve a meal as much as this little guy."

"’Bout time," Owen grumbled, bounding up the stairs two at a time to throw his jacket and kit bag down by his desk. "Don't put that thing down on the table, yeah? Rather not add a toxic sauce to my chow mein."

_"As if,"_ Jack scoffed, carefully helping Mike up the stairs.

"One bio cage!" Toshiko chirped, trotting along to set down what looked like a twisted nest of purpleish, pulsating branches on the floor by the coffee table. "Dare I ask what it’s for?”

Mike hurried to answer "A p'ting!"

_"P'ting?"_

"P’ting!" he confirmed- what? It was fun to say! "It eats non-organic materials- seriously, it can get through _anything!"_

"Took a good chunk outta the cliffs where we found it," Jack chuckled, stepping ahead of Mike to steady the cage for him. "Good thing we got to it in time."

"How did you-"

"Organic blanket!" Mike gushed, carefully crouching over the cage. "_Super_ thick, sterilised- this thing's skin is so toxic it could kill you in a second."

"I've never heard of them,” said Tosh, looking put out. “Jack, how have I never heard of them?"

"They won’t be in our database. Never see them round here- technically they don't exist for another couple centuries, and not within a billion lightyears of earth, but this little guy must’ve slipped through a real doozy of a crack in the rift. He's real far from home."

Tosh, despite her reservations, peered over Mike's shoulder as he gingerly placed the bundle in the cage- and then squealed as the critter poked its sleepy head out. "It's so _cute!”_

"Right?!" said Mike, giving the thing a nervous wave before hastily grabbing what he assumed was the cage handle- but was really just a stand-out knot of vines- and tugging the hatch closed. The p'ting didn't seem to care, nestling back into its blanket immediately. "Jeez, guy's really stuffed, huh?"

"Yeah; with any luck, for at least the next fifty years." Jack clapped him on the shoulder. "Or at least long enough for us to figure out what to do with him."

"Let’s sort that problem out on a full stomach," Owen griped, intercepting Ianto with the menus and scooping them into his own hands. "Pizza?"

_"Owen."_

Owen furrowed his brow at Jack, seemingly bewildered. Jack raised his eyebrow. Owen groaned, and shoved the menus in Mike's now free hands.

"Fine- newbie's choice."

Mike fumbled the catch a little, but managed to snag the China Garden menu before it went AWOL. "Oh- oh, it's fine-"

"Saviour of the day gets first pick," said Jack brightly, clapping him once again- but this time his hand stayed, rubbed, rested on the back of his neck a moment as he smirked. "And boss gets to veto; head’s up, I’m not feeling Greek tonight.”

Mike bit his lip. "Thanks, but, uh... I kinda want pizza, too."

"He's learning," said Owen approvingly, neatly sliding a menu from about halfway down the stack and placing it on top for Mike's perusal. "Go on, then. I'll grab the phone."

"Ianto! Pizza!" Tosh called out helpfully, getting a distant 'on my way' in response from the man who was probably working his coffee magic on six cups at once. “Where’s Gwen?”

“Parking the car, making sure we didn’t drop any toxic p’ting dandruff in there,” said Jack, shrugging out of his coat. “She’ll be along- she always gets the same thing, anyway.”

Mike thought about pointing out that they _all _tended to stick to old favourites, but Tosh beat him to it. Grinning, Mike let them bicker good-naturedly and rounded the coffee table to sink down on the couch, settling in for what he hoped was gonna be a rare night of peace and comfort. Or at least as close as you could get with Owen Harper at the table. _"P'ting"_ he muttered under his breath, smiling. Still fun.

It didn't take long for the rest to fall in around him. Gwen appeared before too long, camping out on the floor so she could coo over the caged alien. After ordering down the phone- and throwing very hissy remarks at anyone who tried to talk over him- Owen flopped down in his desk chair, swivelling to kick his feet up on the table. A swivel which brought him up next to the chair inhabited by Toshiko, his arm draping nonchalantly over her shoulders. She blushed, but he was too caught up in whatever shit he was going on about now to notice. Mike shot her a glance of sympathy- he knew precious few things about Toshiko Sato so far, but one was that she had rather unfortunate taste in men.

Of course, their little awkward chair huddle meant the rest of the couch by Mike was free for Jack and Ianto, and Mike was _not _gonna complain.

Conversation flowed freely amongst the muffled snores of the sleeping p'ting, and aside from chiming in occasionally Mike mostly just watched. Watched Ianto, in his crisp and put-together way, sidle into Jack so far he was practically curled up on top of him. Watched Jack wrap a strong arm around his shoulders without even thinking.

Watched Jack's other hand, also seemingly unconsciously, come down from an elaborate gesture mid-conversation to rest on Mike's knee, and stay there.

Mike wasn't entirely sure where they stood, right now. He was sure- _pretty_ sure- that Jack flirted with him. A lot. Maybe even more than he did normally, just as his most natural form of communication with any living being. And he was _pretty _sure Ianto had noticed. But Ianto never seemed to care, or scoff or get hurt. Sometimes he remained impassive, sometimes he smiled, sometimes- sometimes _he _flirted with Mike, too. The pessimist in Mike wondered if maybe they had some kinda bet going on, but maybe... maybe it was just how they were? Or maybe they were dancing around the possibility of something, something Mike never thought to want for himself but he isn't... _opposed _to.

It was a thought. A _crazy _one, but it sure was a thought. Maybe it wouldn’t go anywhere but… he was happy to wait and see, and take it as it comes. Actually, he was kinda excited.

Man, _that _was a new feeling. Being excited at a prospect, and happy to take it in stride. When was the last time _that _happened?

Come to think of it, he'd been happy a _lot. _He must've broken a personal record for smiling in the last two months alone. Ever since Ianto helped him find a lead on a more permanent place to live, ever since his first mission, ever since he started to be accepted, bit by bit and person by person into the Torchwood fold.

It hadn't all been smooth sailing; the job was difficult, sometimes devastating, and he'd learned the hard way that they couldn't save everyone. That there were some creatures, some _people_ that wouldn't make it, or couldn't be allowed to. There was violence, blood, tears, pain. He had sat on this very couch, covered in blood that wasn't his own, and cried like a baby as fresh and ancient trauma mingled with phantom pain and knocked him down for the count.

But when he woke up, it wasn't to a lonely apartment and the prospect of another day dealing with the fallout alone; it was to Jack's greatcoat draped over him like a blanket, and Ianto's immaculate butter coffee waiting fresh and steaming on the table. To Owen being (begrudgingly) gentle with his barbs for a little while, and Tosh sending him little smiles and Gwen pausing in her work to give him hugs, whenever she thought he needed it. She was _real _good at hugs. All of them, seemingly without needing to ask, helping him put himself back together in whatever little way they could.

And when he was back in one piece he went back out there, and he did the work, and most of the time he saved lives and it was worth every tear he ever shed.

He'd never underestimate the toll it all took, but the reward was worth it. Finally, he was doing something that he cared about, something that interested him, something that _mattered. _Something that made him excited to get out of bed in the morning. Something he could honestly see himself doing for the rest of his life, his _calling_. He loved his job. He loved the strange little gang of people he did it with. Somehow everything that had been preying on him, making his mind turn in on itself and shrivel in anxiety had all clicked into place in the most _bizarre _way he could've ever imagined, and it was all thanks to a tourist trap trail, a near-hook up with a possible serial killer, and a freaking Welsh reddit thread complaining about the not-secret secret society causing mischief in the Cardiff streets. All thanks to looking in the right places, at _exactly _the right times.

He looked around at his little squad fondly. At Owen and Gwen bickering, at Ianto teaming up with Gwen and Jack laughing uproariously at his savage but delicately spoken insults, at Jack's hand on Mike's knee. At Tosh averting her gaze from Owen to share a look with Mike, rolling her eyes with a bashful smile, and then looking instead at the cage on the floor where the soft, burbling sounds of an _actual alien_ snoring like a puppy drifted up to mingle with the fray, and he felt… good. At home, _comfy, _even. Felt like, by a string of crazy coincidences, he'd finally made it to where he was supposed to be.

_Everything is connec-_

_BZZZZZZZT! _

Mike startled, jostling Jack's hand, and six heads- and one pair of sleepy alien eyes- jerked towards Tosh's computer bank, where a message on screen was alerting her to a presence at the front door, in the fake tourist office that fronted their clandestine operations.

"That'll be the pizza," said Ianto, neatly unfolding himself from the couch.

"Most likely," said Jack, sending him on his way to the door with a friendly pat on his ass before turning to Mike. "Mikey, check the CCTV feed, will you? Better safe than sorry."

"Sure thing," he said, hopping to his feet and picking his way round the table- rolling his eyes as Gwen sprang up from the floor and swooped in to take his vacated seat. "Should've seen that coming."

"We need more chairs in here, Jack," said Gwen, settling quite happily and without a shred of remorse into Mike's warm spot. "Family's growing."

"Guess we do," Jack chuckled, catching Mike's eye and winking. "In the meantime, suppose Mikey and Ianto are gonna have to fight over who gets the couch and who sits in my lap."

If Mike stubbed his toe on Tosh's desk, it was an _entirely _unrelated incident.

"Christ, you're lucky we don't have an HR department," Gwen muttered, kicking Jack in the shin.

Mike tuned them out, face flushing, and busied himself with the computer bank. It was a little convoluted, rigged from as many frankensteined machines as it was, but he'd had a few tours from Tosh now and he knew how to get to the upper level CCTV feed. A few taps, a click, another tap and he was- there! There was the reception desk of the 'tourist office', and there was a man, his arms full of pizza boxes, his back to the camera. He seemed to be bouncing on his heels a little, and wearing…

He frowned. "Hey, uh, do pizza guys wear uniforms round here?"

"Not always," said Tosh coming over to peer over his shoulder. "Why do you- oh! _Love _his jacket."

For some reason, Mike's stomach was sinking.

And when the man turned to the camera, his eyes seeming to find the actual concealed lens and look at Mike through the screen, he lost his appetite altogether.

Project Icarus, AKA Dirk Gently grinned, shifted the pizzas to one arm, and gave the hidden camera a little wave, the soundless feed showing his lips parting around a stretched out 'Hiiiiiii!'.

Everyone else was saying Mike's name, trying to get his attention, trying to ask why he looked like he'd seen a ghost. But Mike only had one word on his mind, and it was playing on loop like a DVD menu that he couldn't click off of.

And the word was, quite simply: _Fuck. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everything is connected, indeed.
> 
> Sorry for the cliffhanger-y ending, lads! At least it's a fun cliffhanger xD One day maybe we'll pick it up! But no promises; I've gotta be a little realistic and responsible with my capabilities right now!
> 
> I'm not sure what the next thing you'll see from me will be. It might be the odd little ficlet inspired by Socially Distanced Dirk- I bashed one out last night that I may post if it passes an edit- or a DGHDA fortnightly prompt. The next big(ish) fic I post will, all being well, be a request fic I've had in the pipeline since last summer- I defo never planned to keep this lovely person waiting the better part of a year for it! It's well on its way, a few more scenes and a fair bit of editing, but I'll get back to working on it on my less pain-y days ^^ And then of course there's Stuck In The Middle, which is another thing I probably haven't updated in a year or so... sorry, dudes :/ We'll get there eventually! Guess you'll just have to be my friends forever to get the whole story ;)
> 
> Anyway, thank you for reading, comments as always are prized and treasured and appreciated beyond words, as are [reblogs](https://dont-offend-the-bees.tumblr.com/post/645563591888617472/torchwood-the-call-dontoffendthebees) to spread it to other potential readers! Thanks for coming along for the ride- I hope it was worth the wait!
> 
> Until next time! <3


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